


Planet Under Ransom

by Hyacinthz



Category: The Penumbra Podcast
Genre: Additional Warnings In Author's Note, Alternate Universe - Fusion, Beauty and the Beast Elements, Canon-Typical Violence, I am once again writing love letters to peter nureyev, Implied Sexual Content, Minor Character Death, Minor Original Character(s), Other, POV Third Person, i had to nerf Rita to make this plot work RITA I'M SORRY YOU'RE TOO POWERFUL, this is set in... basically canon but Inexplicably There's Magic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-14
Updated: 2020-08-22
Packaged: 2021-03-04 00:15:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 29,136
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24634432
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Hyacinthz/pseuds/Hyacinthz
Summary: There was never a king on New Kinshasa. There was never a prince. There were, briefly, a pair of impostors.(a Beauty and the Beast AU. More or less.)
Relationships: Peter Nureyev/Juno Steel
Comments: 48
Kudos: 78





	1. Ransom

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This takes place circa season 1 but will include characterization stuff through Man in Glass and some incredibly minor things from Ultrabots (s3.14) in chapter 3. Check out the notes on that chapter for more info.
> 
> cw: Everything here is mostly canon-typical (violence, alcohol mentions/use, references to canonical trauma, characters' mental states) but I do want to mention: there is dehumanizing language used towards the beginning. You know, the kind a lady might use if he thought he was talking to/about a thing and not a person. This includes it/its pronouns, which are no longer used once he's directly asked to use the correct ones.

There was never a king on New Kinshasa. There was never a prince. There were, briefly, a pair of impostors. There was a supposedly reclaimed bloodline, a bright-eyed con of a king. Picture him in marble: arms, eyes, and smile all spread wide, policies revolutionary. Beside him, an angel-faced prince. Brahman citizens rejoiced on their planet under Ransom, for their Guardian Angels had stopped shooting them down in the streets.

Their king never lived to see the marble: his revolution stopped revolving. The canny prince weighed a city’s press of lives against a father’s. There was a betrayal or two, a flash of silver, a room painted red. But that’s private: a family matter. All the people of Brahma ever knew was that their king was dead, long live the king.

If the High Councilor Rossignol had her way, the boy king would be short-lived. To put it simply, when the monarchy returned, she lost her planet. She lost her Angels. She lost her city. But the problem with assassinating an impostor king in a sprawling, empty castle is this:

There are infinite corners within which he can disappear.

And so, Rossignol turned to darker matters, to magic. With the curse, the boy king disappeared by inches. Bits of him stuck to those corners he so happily haunted. The people of New Kinshasa built a statue of King Mag Ransom in their square. It took only days for them to forget his son ever existed.

Mostly. Two decades later, all anyone knows is that parents on New Kinshasa teach their children to stay away. You see: there’s a ghost in that castle, and those who venture inside never return.

Well, mostly. Plenty of lucky idiots stumble back stuffed full with the fear of a many-limbed beast with glinting eyes, one that never steps into the light.

Again, mostly. Sure, some claim they’ve seen it clearly, but they’re the least believable of the bunch. They can’t keep their damn stories straight. Does the thing have four arms, or six? Does it have clacking hooves, or actual human feet in heeled boots? Is it or is it not wearing glasses? Juno Steel’s got a long history with bad intel, but he’s not sure he’s ever had worse from supposed eyewitnesses.

He doesn’t want to be here. He never wanted his first trip off-planet to be a rickety shuttle to the Outer Rim. He _definitely_ never wanted it to be to Brahma, where he’s just as likely to get an orbital stun and a heart attack as a drunk and disorderly. And ghost stories? He’s a PI, not an exorcist. Juno Steel doesn’t know a thing about hauntings and he would _love_ to keep it that way, thank you very much.

He’d rather be anywhere else, but there’s a problem with this whole mess. That problem? Some idiot offers tours.

And some other idiot’s secretary caught a stream special on the place and thought _oh, this seems like a great way to ruin Mister Steel’s whole life, better hop right on the next shuttle._

Really, it’s nothing new. Just like most days, his biggest problem is about 4’8” and coated in salmon-flavored dust.

He gave her two days of vacation and one more with no contact before he started doing his research. On the fifth day, he took a cab to the spaceport with an optimistically light bag slung across his shoulder. And here, on the seventh day, he’s got two feet on New Kinshasa. He’s throwing back drinks with some locals, trying to figure out how to do this _without_ paying a thousand-cred booking fee.

A thousand goddamn creds, Rita.

The locals all agree: don’t. So, Juno Steel ignores them and figures he’ll just do what the tours do: show up. Just him without a guide, what could go wrong?

It’s not a far walk from the center of town, but it’s a lonely one. The shining buildings surrounding the castle courtyard all sit vacant, businesses and homes alike. Juno can hear the twilight bustle of the city at large from the castle’s gates, but he can’t spot a single person. There aren’t even squatters in the pristine and empty homes and storefronts.

 _Anywhere_ but here. He could be anywhere in the damn system. He could be on a beach. He could be in his bed. The gate creaks open easy enough. The ornate door, too.

“Rita!” He yells to the dusty entry hall. He stomps in. The door hits its frame hard behind him and he only jumps a little. The place isn’t as grand as he expected. Yeah, it’s a castle. It’s a twenty-something-year-old castle left to rot almost immediately after restoration, after the king died. Sure, everything’s painted gold and geometric in that tacky rich-person New Deco style, but there’s no furniture at all. The paint’s peeling all over the place. There’s half an artist’s tag over the busted fireplace. “Rita, goddamn it. I’m not fighting any ghost for you, so you’d better come out right now or I swear—”

“In here, boss!” He follows the echo of her call. She keeps up a low chatter. Which—okay, that’s standard Rita. It makes her easy to find, it leads him through scuffed up halls and mildewed antechambers. There’s no light anywhere, no bulbs in sockets. He finds her in the center of a mostly empty room, maybe a bedroom. She’s sat on what looks like a stupidly expensive pillow, all brocade roses and tassels. She’s surrounded by three monitors, each older than the one before. They give off the only light in the room—hell, in any room. The smallest and oldest of the three starts flickering and Rita whaps it twice with her palm. The image steadies. “There ya go. Mister Steel! I didn’t think you’d come looking for little ole me for at least another week. What are you doing?”

“Rita, what are _you_ doing?” And yeah, maybe he’s shouting. Maybe his tone isn’t _diplomatic_ or _friendly_ or _welcoming_. But he doesn’t deserve the thing that flickers into existence right behind her, and he _definitely_ doesn’t deserve to squeak out a yelp and fall right on his ass. He can’t help the way he shuffles back until he hits a wall, the way he shrinks into it.

The thing has six arms. No, wait—it has eight. Then, four. It has too many teeth, and they’re all red at the tips and sharp as knives. He doesn’t know if it has eyes. It does have willowy fingers ending in claws and it’s made of either smoke or marble. It’s tall enough to either hit the high ceiling or about seven feet. It’s not shaped like anything he can name, and it doesn’t stop changing. He thinks maybe if he stopped needing to blink he could understand what stands in front of him, what hovers right behind—

“Rita,” he croaks. “Rita, don’t look. It’ll be fine, I swear, just come here—”

“Boss, quit being rude. That’s just Mister Ransom.” She turns to it. “Sorry about him. Not always the most tactful lady, if you know what I mean. He’s good, though. Good at what he does and what he does is good. He ain’t gonna sabotage us, no way.”

The thing makes a long noise, something between the squeal of rusted metal and the hiss of an especially grumpy cat. It’s perfect for crawling right up a spine.

“Mister Ransom, that ain’t very polite, either. You oughta use your words. I know you’re trying to scare him away, but I’ve been tellin’ you for the whole week that a team is better than a duo. I get why you didn’t want any of those vandal jokers staying, but you get Mister Steel on board and we’ll have those guns down for good in no time. Plus, I’m outta creds. So, he’s my only way home. And PLUS—” She stops to breathe. “You’ve got a real nice voice and I can’t listen to it when you do all that creaky stuff.”

The thing resolves itself. It’s more solid, but it still shifts at the edges like smoke on a breeze. It settles into something a reasonable height, something human-shaped. It’s still toothy and four-armed. “My dear,” it says. It sounds like it’s speaking through water. “I would prefer not to open my doors to strangers. I appreciate your enthusiasm for the task, but I’ll remind you that I’ve given you no options. You’re to stay here.”

“You’re holding her hostage?” Juno stands. He straightens up.

The thing grins and Juno honest-to-god gags a little. “Captive would be more accurate, but, well: I suppose you _have_ gathered a Ransom.”

“Uh, that’s very funny and all but ‘scuse me.” She _snaps her fingers at it_. She snaps her fingers three whole times. He didn’t expect it to happen this way but, yup: he’s going to die of a heart attack floating above Brahma. The thing gives her its full attention. “Yeah, I’ve got options. Got the option to do what I want. And what I want is to shut down those big guns. Mister Steel, you know about those? They’re just nasty. Mister Ransom told me all about them and I’m telling the both of you right now: I ain’t leaving till they’re finished, you hear me?”

Juno takes some steps toward Rita, toward the awful thing. He takes some more. He lets out a shuddering breath, points his chin at the monster. “And I’m not leaving without you. I guess you’ve got house guests, _Ransom_.”

The thing shivers at the edges. Smoke folds in on itself, billows out. It does have eyes for a moment, two of them. They’re dark and all pupil. They reflect the light from the monitors. It blinks at him. He blinks at it. When his eyes open again, it’s gone.

“Don’t take it personal, Mister Steel, he’s always doing that.” Rita’s back to her monitors, back to typing on her comms, which is plugged into all three monitors at once via a dangerous-looking tangle of bald wires. “He doesn’t mean anything by it. Guy just has an awful lot of trouble staying put.”

“Rita—”

“House rules, boss: Mister Ransom can hear pretty much everything from what I can tell, even if he’s too tired to come and talk. So, if you don’t have anything nice to say, it’s only polite to keep it zipped.” She’s looking at him hard, she’s wearing a serious Rita look, which mostly means her whole face scrunches towards her nose. “And good luck leaving till he’s ready for us to scram. You open a door and it’s just nothing out there. Nothing but dark. Not gonna try and sneak out. You know I’ve seen a movie or two: I know what happens. Ain’t doing it.”

“Rita!”

“Don’t know how I’m gonna hack those guns with just my busted comms and three monitors.” She sighs, elbow on her knee and chin in her hand. Just for a second. “BUT. I’m gonna do it. Worst-case, I convince Mister Ransom to let us set up shop in his living room. Three busy months of _Rita and Steel Investigations: Brahma Edition_ and maybe we’ve got enough to get a used super-processing chip and a broadcaster/receiver and a keyboard and a new comms and a little something for you, too.”

“RITA! What was that thing?”

“That’s MISTER RANSOM, boss. He ain’t a thing, he’s a gentleman.”

“Rita, its teeth—”

“Mister Steel, you’ve gotta be nice. He’s fine, he doesn’t eat people. Can’t even touch ‘em. His teeth just look like that, I asked. He’s sorta pretty, all that smoke. And you don’t get so queasy or migraine-y if you don’t look right at him. I know it’s rude, but he understands.”

There. He’s got his angle. “Rita, you’re sure it can’t touch us?”

“Can’t touch anything. He had to show me where I could get some monitors, where I could get this pillow. Hey, bet he’ll keep you around if you help move some furniture! All the beds are stuffed into one room and, boss, I’ve got a lotta talents, but moving heavy stuff ain’t one of ‘em.”

It can’t touch them, but it can keep them inside. He’s pacing. Normally he’d be talking, too. Telling it all to Rita or the walls. But, no, the thing hears everything. “At least all the beds are in one place. I’ll keep watch half the night and you take the second half.”

She puts her comms down. “If you think I’m missing out on half a night’s sleep because you’re scared of a guy who ain’t all that scary, I don’t know what to tell you. Thought we knew each other better than that. I’ve been here a whole week and I slept like a rabbit on knockout pills the whole time. Figures you’d show up and make me lose sleep. Stay up all night, Mister Steel, see if I care while I’m snoozin’ away.”

So, he does. Once she’s done, Rita leads him to a huge room stuffed wall-to-wall with bed frames. Most have mattresses. Hers is a massive thing halfway across the room ( _king-sized, boss. We can share if you wanna, but you’d better stay on your side or I’ll kick you_ ) with clothes all over it. He turns down her offer and picks the closest bed that doesn’t look like a spider nest while she crawls her way across five others to get to her chosen island in the sea of damask.

There’s a window in this room and it _was_ boarded up. Juno watches it most of the night while Rita snores away. The wood looks like it came from a castle table, or maybe a wardrobe door. It’s got angular gold sunrise motifs at the corners, it’s made of dark synth-wood so lacquered it shines. Someone ripped it off the window recently, he’d guess. He’d guess it was Rita. There’s a crowbar right there beneath the sill and the edges on the wood are jagged and sharp. And it’s a tall window, but the person hadn’t come close to getting all the way to the top, they’d barely hit halfway. He stays awake and watches the morning go bright and thinks _huh_.

Every window he saw the day before, boarded up. It’s not too much of a stretch to guess a thing made of shadows doesn’t love the light. With eyes like that, it’d blind itself in a second. Is this why Rita could sleep so easy?

If that’s true, sheesh. Could’ve warned a lady.

Rita shifts and stretches and smacks her lips. He asks: “Hey. Did you take the boards off the window to keep it out?”

She screams. Oops. Yeah, maybe he should’ve given her a second. “Boss! I can’t be hearing your voice before I’m really even awake, it’s like a nightmare.” She sits up, wipes at her eyes, squints at him. “He told me to do it. Said this was my room and I oughta have privacy. Did you really, actually not sleep at all? ‘Cause, not to be rude. But you could use some beauty rest is all I’m saying.”

Maybe it’s the sleepless night, but he laughs until he’s wiping little tears from his eyes. “Yeah. Yeah, you’ve been saying that for years. Missed it.”

“Aww, Mister Steel! I’ll never, ever leave you for a whole week again. Now let’s get going, I want breakfast.”

He hadn’t thought about food, not even a little. But oh, look at that: he didn’t eat the night before and he’s pretty hungry. And that gnawing pit is trading punches with the churning in his stomach that says _any meal you get will come from_ that thing. _You might even have to see it while you eat_.

He takes it back. Should’ve left Rita for lost and savored his bagel and cloned beef hash from the deli downstairs. It would be better that way.

Breakfast ends up being a whole lot of unfamiliar fruit piled in a basket and a pitcher of water, all set on a bare dining table in a dark room. Juno Steel would like to state again, for the record: he didn’t eat dinner last night.

“This thing trying to starve us? This is hardly anything at all. I’m telling you, Rita, maybe it doesn’t eat people, but long enough on an all-fruit, no-coffee diet and _I_ might—”

“Detective Steel, I have a request.” He looks up at it and _ugh._ Still bad to look at.

It’s in the nebulous form it first took, the one that might look like a cloud if a cloud also looked like a latex sack of body parts being shaken enthusiastically. But—it can talk without looking like a person. Good to know.

“I’m listening.”

“I understand you’re not a willing guest here, and I won’t begrudge you your resentment. And I know that I’m. . . unfamiliar. That you have not met anyone like me. But I am a man who uses the pronouns he and him _._ I do not appreciate being called _it_. Call me _thing,_ call me _monster_ all you’d like. Why mince words? You’re a prisoner here, and surely only a monster would do that. But I would appreciate—”

“Yeah. Yeah, of course. I—yeah.”

“All I ask. I am sorry I didn’t stay longer yesterday evening. Miss Rita and I spent most of the day talking, and it’s rather draining. Did you sleep well, my dear?” Juno sneaks a look at—at him when he looks at Rita.

He looks nothing like a man. But the way he moves, the way he turns to Rita, the fall of his words, the language he uses to describe himself. He’s some kind of monstrosity that actively starts fights with your eyes, with your brain. But even here in the dim of the room it’s obvious: this thing was a human guy once. He doesn’t need to nod in time with Rita’s patter, he doesn’t need to arrange himself in a way that gives an illusion of hunching over the table, of leaning on a smoky limb like it’s an elbow.

When he’s not careful, that limb of his dips through the synth-wood. He can’t touch anything.

“Detective, as I said: I apologize for not giving a more thorough introduction yesterday. But you should know that it’s perfectly safe to sleep. I won’t enter the guest room unless asked, you have my word. I am sorry I can’t offer you anything more concrete.”

He must look really awful. Either that, or Ransom _did_ watch them last night. “Here’s something you could offer: more food. I like fruit as much as the next dame, but this isn’t gonna cut it.”

“ _Boss_ —”

Ransom reaches out a limb to brush against Rita and Juno’s halfway out of his seat before he remembers the guy’s intangible. “It’s all right, my dear. Detective, I must apologize again, but I can only offer what people bring to the doors. They leave it to honor the old king. Call me a thief if you will, but it’s all I have to give.” And he stretches out a limb to cradle a purple stone fruit with a shining skin. “I can carry it inside, you see.”

 _Can’t touch anything, boss._ Bad intel again. And Juno _gets_ it. Ransom defies explanation. But, come on. Rita could’ve mentioned he juggles fruit salad in his spare time. Speaking of which—

“Listen,” he says at Rita. “I get that you’re against the surveillance state, the death rays. Trust me: I’m right there with you. But how did Ransom here keep you happy on a steady diet of no streams, no snacks, fruit only?”

Rita smiles at him and, there: there’s the tiniest bit of mania hiding behind her eyes. “It ain’t always fruit. I’m just so really glad you’re here, Mister Steel.” And he hears _save me, boss, I can’t say anything mean to this guy because I like him too much, but I’m_ really _about to snap._

His world is suddenly right-side-up again. He can work with this.

“Ransom. You trust Rita, right? How about this: you keep me here and you let her go shopping. I have creds, she can get us some real food. I can’t even get her to work four consecutive hours without a bag of snacks, how do you expect her to hack a whole city?”

Juno blinks and Ransom has eyes, a whole cluster of them. He’s blinking them all at once. He’s thinking it over. “Why, yes. I think that will work nicely. Would you mind, my dear?”

“Mister Ransom, literally nothing would get me happier.” And the bit of him that just had eyes—the face—shudders like she threw a stone into his surface. Guilt? Maybe guilt.

He’s nothing like a man, but something about looking for one in him makes it easier to focus, easier to catch the changes in his shape as they come and go without gagging, without his brains dribbling out his ears. Ransom and Rita talk and Juno watches. At first, Ransom stays still but for the constant roiling of his body. But both he and Rita are talkers. The sentences get longer and he starts talking with his—well. Sometimes they’re hands.

It’s obviously magic. But this isn’t your standard ten-cred houseplant revitalization or even storybook princes-to-frogs stuff. Did he do it to himself? What kind of power could do this to _anyone_?

And—the king’s long dead. Who killed the king?

His money’s on whoever made the ghost in the castle. Whether it's Ransom himself or—or. Did the monster name himself for the king? Or could he be—

“Detective? Detective Steel? Is that all right? Anything you’d care to add?”

“Don’t bother, Mister Ransom. He’s long gone, he’s thinking. I’ll get him a little treat.”

“I can hear you, Rita. Don’t need a treat, I’m not a dog. Grab me plenty of coffee and something to drink?”

“Your creds, boss.” And she doesn’t do subtle disappointment, so he’s probably imagining it. Great. “Load me up, all right? Mister Ransom and I came up with a whole menu while you were staring at the air.”

He looks at Ransom. “You eat?”

Ransom shudders, the edges of him vibrating with it, smoking off the bulk of him. That, well. Who knows what that means? “No, no. I simply wanted to be sure everything would keep. This building isn’t completely powered, but the cellar has a hook-up to the city’s internal power grid and an icebox. I thought—”

“Got it.” Juno grabs a ripe-looking blue fruit and digs in. It’s fine. There’s one upside to the morning: he can go rip the rest of that wood off the bedroom window and take a long nap in a sunbeam. He takes a big bite and speaks juice. “It, uh. It gonna be a problem, Rita coming and going? Hooking up to the city’s power? Anyone own this place?”

“I do.” And his form wavers a little, fades completely before coming back a little smaller. “I—I don’t remember. It’s mine. No one else has come for it.”

“You don’t—what do you remember?”

“I’m called Ransom. I’m a man. I—” He’s getting closer to person-shaped every second. Until: “I—I don’t have time to talk about this. I’ve been here long enough: I won’t be able to come back if I don’t rest. Detective Steel, I’d encourage you to do the same. Rita? Be safe.”

“Aww, Mister Ransom. Safe’s my middle name. Boss, you’d better be ready to help me carry. Need some extra to rent a cart or something.” There’s a quick shakedown and he hands over his wallet.

By the time Rita’s left the room, Ransom’s gone.

Juno makes his way back to their bedroom. Turns out, that’s harder without Rita around to guide him. So, he does a little snooping—what of it? One, he’s a private dick, never pretended to be anything but. Two, Rita’s house rules just said _don’t leave_. If he’s in a cage, well. It’s his goddamn cage.

So, it starts with being lost and ends with being nosy. What else is new?

It’s not like he finds much, anyway. The old king wasn’t much for vanity, there’s more of him in the town’s square than on the castle’s walls. He finds a library full of ransacked electronics and untouched antique books.

Too untouched. The few he cracks open reek of mildew. No climate control without power.

Towards the top of the castle, he finds the room Ransom sleeps in. There aren’t enough creds in the system to get him through the door, but he can tell it’s Ransom’s by how dark it gets in the hall. It’s like how Rita described the outside when he wants you in: nothing at all. It’s darker than the window of a shuttle when you’re _sure_ it’s gonna break down any second now, that you’ll be sucked into space before you ever set foot on any other stupid planet.

Not looking forward to that return flight.

Goddamn it, Steel. It’s that or _this_. One measly shuttle flight or captivity. Get it together.

He tiptoes away from Ransom’s black hole of a door and all the way down to the entryway. He noses his way back to the bedroom by retracing his steps from the night before.

By the time his head finally hits the sunlit pillow after some full-bodied prying and gentle splinter extraction, Rita’s yelling for him. Just his luck.

Ransom’s waiting at the door. Juno and Rita schlep all sorts of stuff—mostly non-perishables and frozen food—from the hovering wagon Rita rented to either the empty kitchen or the cellar. Juno’s lucky enough to get to brave the cellar stairs five or so times.

“Dinner and a show, huh?” He pants at Ransom’s watchful eyes after the third. It makes the guy go haywire around the edges. Serves him right.

After the fifth trip, he’s really struggling. He sits right on the marble floor—at least it’s cold—to wait for Rita to get back from returning the cart. It’s nice, actually. He lies all the way down. The marble cools all the sweat on his back. He shivers and aims to catch his breath.

“I’m sorry I can’t help.” Ransom slithers into Juno’s field of vision. He sounds torn up about it. He’s got too many hands and he’s really, actually wringing them together.

“Let’s get Rita to leave ‘em in honor of King Ransom next time,” Juno wheezes. “Then it’s all you and your fifteen arms.”

“I—” It’s weird, how the sharp twist of Ransom’s body is so clearly a turn of the head. He doesn’t even _have_ a head, not at the moment. “That might work. Detective, what are you thinking?”

“Thinking I’m running on no sleep, three drinks, and one piece of fruit in the last Martian day, Ransom. Pretend I didn’t say a thing and ask me tomorrow.”

And that not-turn of the not-head he’s got trained on Juno doesn’t move an inch. “Of course.” He says it soft. Wonder how that works: talking for a guy who only has a mouth part-time, who probably doesn’t have anything like lungs in that shuffle of his.

What’s the point of claws that can’t rake, of teeth that can’t bite? Of a body so completely impractical, so impossible to even look at?

Juno pushes himself up on his elbows. He looks at Ransom. And yeah, he was being a jerk before. But it still hurts to watch Ransom change, he still feels it in his gut and esophagus every time he blinks to see another piece where it shouldn’t be, to see something that isn’t anything near skin twist and melt and reform.

So, what’s the point?

To keep people away. Gotta be.

“Enjoying the view, detective?”

“Or something. Hey, by the way: quit it with that. It’s Juno.” He ripples again. Juno thought that was guilt, but maybe not. Maybe he should leave the kinesics to the quirky genius detectives on stream serials. He’s only one of those things and, eh. Even that’s only on his better days.

“Juno—”

From the doorway: “BOSS, you’re gonna need to make us some food, stat.”

“I’ll back that motion.” He pushes himself all the way upright with only one weird pop from his elbow, one nice crack from his spine. He looks skeptically at the hand Ransom offers. “You trying to make me fall over?” And, because curiosity killed the detective, he swipes at it.

Ransom’s hand feels exactly like the air Juno’s displaces on its way through. It feels like nothing at all.

Ransom goes small. Goddamn it, he didn’t mean— “I—of course. Silly of me. I’m sorry, detective.”

Juno stands. Shrugs. Feels like shit for a second before he remembers: this is the man holding them captive. “For a guy who apologizes so much, you just keep doing things, huh?”

He closes his eyes for one nice, full body stretch. His hip pops. Somewhere in it, Ransom disappears. Juno blinks at the space he took up for a second. He’s getting predictable.

“Wasn’t so polite of you, boss.” And there’s a little reproach in it, but mostly she just breezes on by.

“Yeah. I know.” He follows. He’s got food to make.

There’s a quick battle with the actual wood-burning stove, one that has lucky piles of dry fuel sitting right next to it. He whips up a lazy noodle soup with pre-made broth, synth eggs, plenty of chili oil, and some weird purple allium that slices like green onion. It’s something he used to prep at home and put together on a hot plate at the precinct. It’s something she smelled one time walking by his desk and said _boss, bring me some tomorrow, huh?_ And he had.

“Did I get the right stuff?” The cabinets are overflowing with dishes, with utensils. There’s dust coating the bowls, but there are seven sizes to choose from. Sheesh. Who needs all this?

He rinses a bowl out and fixes it for her. “You tell me.” And the fact that she doesn’t say anything, that she digs right in and doesn’t stop eating even though it’s hot enough to scald, well. Good enough.

He sits next to her at the plain kitchen table. Whether it’s meant for food prep or servants—doesn’t matter. There’s no way he’s headed back to that creepy dining room.

He’s slower with his soup. He’s usually—he eats quick. You have to, when—

Whatever. He’s nursing the kind of hunger that cramps like nausea. So, he goes light on the chili and sips at the salty broth till he can manage more. Rita’s eyeballing what’s left on the stove by the time he’s halfway done. “All yours,” he says, and she pounces.

A week of whatever people left on the doorstep. She deserves it.

“How long will it take, do you think? You really think he’ll let us go once you’re done, don’t you?”

She pulls her comms out of her pocket and slides it his way. It’s smashed in at the top left corner, damage spider-webbing down from there. He prods it, looking quick at her to make sure he’s not somehow making it worse. He activates the screen.

Tries, at least. It flickers, livelier than the decades-old monitor she’d been working on the night before. He can’t make out a thing.

“So, you’re seeing how it’s going, right? I have to use the comms to power the monitors—although, now you’re here, we could move ‘em all to the cellar. Didn’t trust me and an armful of stuff on those stairs. But my poor comms is barely hanging in there and it’s a real pain to try and type on it. Literally, boss, just look at my fingers.” And she presses fingertips scuffed by the screen’s cracked-up bits all up in his face.

He pulls back. “Okay, okay, I see them. A week? Another two weeks?”

“Told you, Mister Steel. This ain’t working. Three busy months and everything left in your wallet and _maybe_ we can buy—”

Ransom clears his throat. Or makes the right noise, anyway.

Vicky sicced Juno on a tropical fish smuggler once. The whole thing was a real circus, start to finish. Apparently, the smuggler elbowed in on the business of one of Vick’s weirder contacts. So, in goes Steel in his first and last starring role as combination muscle/seafood wrangler. Juno ended up staking out the mark’s base—an aquarium—from opening till _well_ past close. And, yeah, there was plenty to look at. But to keep his brain from turning circles like so many fish behind glass, he’d spent hours focused on the sprawling koi pond, a favorite of field trips and parents with no desire to parent but plenty of change for fistfuls of food.

That’s what Ransom looks like where he appears in the kitchen entry. He’s rippling away like a whole platoon of kids tossed smelly pellets into his smoke and mirrors. There’s something big writhing beneath his surface, an endless competitive flop of hungry fish.

“I believe I have a solution. Detective—” All Ransom’s eyes on him. Great. “You said it this morning: I trust Rita. And Rita—” His voice changes. All he had for Juno was guilt, tight and strained. For Rita, he softens the edges of his words. He dredges up something bitter in Juno’s gut. “I believe you when you say you care about this. About Brahma. About stopping the Guardian Angel System for good. To that end, I’d appreciate it if you take what’s left of Detective Steel’s creds and travel back to Mars. Use your own equipment. Complete what you need. We have plenty of food. I’ll keep him safe. I promise.”

“This another of your _ain’t got any option_ s?” And oh, she’s _mad._ She’s only ever that short when she’s mad.

There’s a pause that Juno can hear. He’s heard it plenty before, hasn’t he? In fact, the silence can be sourced directly back to him, one way or another. _I’m sorry_ hangs in the air, but Ransom doesn’t apologize.

“Well. You could both stay here until you finish the job.”

Rita looks at Juno and does the math, her mouth all twisted at one corner. He gives her a little shrug, one she’ll understand as _up to you_. He could just say it, but he’s trying to make it easy on her, not Ransom.

And how long could it possibly take? Travel time to and from Hyperion City would probably take longer than the actual work. Yeah: he had plenty of plans for blowing his lousy savings, none of which included multiple trips to Brahma. But, whatever. Might as well happen.

There’s an off-chance Rita could rustle up a rescue. But Ransom won’t hurt him and the guns need to go down, so she probably shouldn’t bother. Doesn’t mean he has to like it.

Juno spends a second wishing for a time machine. He’d go back to this morning and tell the lady to shut up and eat his fruit. This is what you get for having a bright idea, Steel.

Ransom, though. He’d come up with it eventually. He’s about the long game, Juno can see it in the way he waits for Rita’s response. He’s not still, the man’s physiology doesn’t let him be still. But he’s the closest to it Juno’s seen yet.

“Boss,” she says. She’s scary when she’s quiet. “Come and help me pack.”

She leads him upstairs and gets him packing her bags while she paces. He does the work. Disbelief sits numb in his hands, in his head. It’s not that the world’s ending or anything, it’s not even that bad. It’s just—fish behind glass. He’s perfectly safe. He’s unquestionably stuck.

He carries her bag to the door and she hugs him before she goes ( _if I’m doing this,_ a growl aimed at a rippling Ransom _, I’m going now. I ain’t wasting any time_ ). It’s a long hug, longer than he can normally stand. She pulls him down to her level and talks in his ear. “Be safe, Mister Steel. I’ll be quick. But don’t you go falling down any stairs or drinking yourself silly or breaking anything of yours. What’ll he do if you get hurt? Stand around and look sorry?” She pulls away. “I really think he will, you know. Let us go. You asked and I forgot to say. So just stay okay till then, boss. For me.”

“Yeah. You too.” And he watches the door close on her. He can see past it, just for a second. He gets his first taste of a New Kinshasa night: humidity hangs in the air, warm lights pour from distant windows. Far beyond the skyline, there’s a slice of something that might be Brahma, a split-second glimpse of the curve of the planet below.

Pretty. If you like that sort of thing. He misses the neon.

Before the door slams shut, black-hole darkness eats up the view. “Detective—”

There’s familiar venom sitting in Juno’s mouth. Most days he can’t stand the sound of it, but, hey: why not put it to good use? He spits the words: “Told you, it’s Juno. Get used to it, Ransom. We’ll be spending a lot of time together.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Mag: i'm gonna steal it.  
> Peter: uh. . . what?  
> Mag: i'm gonna steal the city of New Kinshasa.
> 
> didn't go so well it seems :c


	2. Peter

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> canon-typical (violence, alcohol mentions/use, references to canonical trauma, characters' mental states). 
> 
> Two new tags! One refers to the presence/mention of characters I made up in my own head and the other to a fade-to-black scene.

He remembers that the first people to come for him were just that: people. They were not subtle. Perhaps they thought they were. Perhaps he knew they were coming. Either way: when they tore their way through his home, he was nowhere to be found.

The next thing to come for him was not a person.

It was shaped like one. It was shaped like—like someone who could be safe. Things are less than clear, here. The thing looked like someone he knew. It wore a crown that was wrong, called him a name that was very nearly right. It couldn’t lure him out because he knew this: the man it faked already died by his hand.

The thing that faked at being the man died by his hand as well. His knife didn’t work so easily, but he finished the job. It was all whirring machinery beneath warm skin. He ground his knife deep into the mechanisms until they stopped moving. It didn’t bleed.

The final attempt he remembers well: the next thing to come for him was, relentlessly, nothing at all.

He is a man. He is called Ransom. He remembers too well the feeling of becoming nothing and no one.

He does not remember the feel of his own skin, the sound of his voice echoing through his skull, the smell nor taste of any food. He does not remember his name.

Each morning after he figured out the routine but before he stole Rita, he’d bring in the king’s offering. He’d touch it. If it were something hot, he’d hold it close.

These are the things he doesn’t tell Juno Steel.

But the lady’s a detective. And there are just some things Ransom _really_ doesn’t need to bother telling him. Things he’s heard a million times. Things like _I don’t think this is a good idea_.

“Detective—Juno. I understand you’re upset. But I don’t think this is a good idea.”

“You and Rita both.” And it’s pathetic, isn’t it? All that finger-curling rage and he can only manage to hole up in Rita’s royalty-sized and recently vacated bed with a fifth of whiskey. And, okay; he’s not an idiot. He knows what it looks like. It’s just that Ransom’s hovering right outside the open door. He’d have to go through the guy and down two flights of stairs for a glass. Just let him sip from the bottle like a civilized person, all right? He might spill a bit, but it’s not like it matters. He’s got plenty of beds to choose from. “Listen, I’m headed to bed. Having a nightcap, whatever. Literally, there’s no reason for you to care. Thought you said you’d leave me alone in here.”

He’s wavering like a heat mirage in the doorway. “I will. I will. Only, I heard what Rita said, how useless I’d be in an emergency. She’s right. I can’t—if you need to be moved, if you fall. Please, will you—”

“Promised I wouldn’t drink myself silly, didn’t I? Not trying to get hurt, Ransom, not tonight. If you can’t believe that, this little hostage situation isn’t going to work.”

He’s worse than usual out there. He’s nearly vibrating, flicking in and out of existence. He looks close to coming apart. “Is that a joke?”

“Ha. Yup. Hilarious. Leave me alone. Go nap or whatever, you’re not looking so hot.”

“Juno, I know you won’t forgive me. I don’t expect that. Just, please, let me keep my promise to Rita. Please, be safe.”

Juno takes a last pull from the thing and crawls across a million beds to walk it out to the hallway. “Happy? Can I sleep now?”

Two of the guy’s eight hands aim for his shoulders and miss. Juno’s too tired to flinch. It doesn’t seem to bother Ransom that they pass right through. “Yes. Yes, _thank you_. Sleep well.”

He’s too tired to think, but he rolls himself up in a duvet and does it anyway. Ransom just keeps reaching, doesn’t he? It’s been, what? Twenty years, maybe longer. Juno doesn’t know the rules of the thing. Maybe he could touch people once upon a time. But twenty years is a long time to keep hoping. Sounds exhausting. Juno Steel couldn’t manage it.

He drops into sleep on that cheery thought. If he dreams, he doesn’t remember in the morning.

He hits the kitchen first thing. He can’t really bring himself to care if the cave of a dining room has grown fruit since he left. But there’s a covered basket waiting for him on the kitchen table. The cloth hides hand-sized pastries, still warm enough to steam up his palm. They smell like flour and butter and spices.

Okay. So. It’s this or canned beans.

So, yeah, it’s not fruit. It’s a generously spiced savory pie, all root vegetables and lingering heat. There’s ten of them in the basket and they’re only getting colder. Juno Steel eats three, easy. And then two more, with a little effort.

Once he’s closed his eyes a while, once he’s made coffee, once he feels ready to face the guy, he gripes a question at the wall: “So, who brings them?”

Like a dog to heel, Ransom pops right up. “It’s someone nearby. I’m not sure why they do it. They leave things for me before sunrise so I can retrieve them.”

“Thought they were for the king.”

“Well, yes. But I’m here and the king isn’t. I know there are rumors about me. Perhaps they think I’m what’s left of him.”

“Are you?”

“No.” Ransom looks small and thin, kind of worn. He’s more smoke than anything, featureless and shifting vaguely with every blink of Juno’s eyelids. “Or—maybe? But not—I’m not him.” His voice goes the kind of dreamy mostly sold by Saffron Pharma or Mick’s uncle. “I think I was a king, once.”

“Okay, your majesty. Listen: I don’t like you.”

Ransom flickers once, but he stays.

“But you don’t have any books and I’ll be here at least a week. So, I’m gonna figure you out.”

“No books? There’s a library—”

“All rotten. Can’t read ‘em.”

“But—no books? Are you absolutely certain?”

“ _No_ , I’m not—Ransom. Forget about the books. You’ve got your very own pet detective, point me somewhere and let me do my thing. Or let me have a drink or three without losing it, those are pretty much the options I’m seeing.”

Ransom goes still. And maybe it’s just fatigue, but he’s really, actually still. “Do you mean it?”

“That I’ll day drink if you don’t let me _do something?_ Yeah, I do. Probably won’t find anything, but it’ll kill time. Don’t know if you’ve seen me, but I’m no good at sitting around and looking pretty.”

“Juno.” Just that. But, god. His voice. It’s got years of hope hanging in it. Expectations are bad news, Steel. Ought to know that by now.

“Don’t get too excited. I’m getting more coffee and then you’re answering some questions.”

Juno sits. Ransom hovers over a chair and under the table. Wonder how much energy it takes, playacting like that, and for something as simple as sitting. Juno starts the interrogation:

 **Question:** so, you can go outside in the dark?

 **Answer:** not all the time. Only if there’s something there for me.

 **Question:** if you’re not the king, why are you named Ransom?

 **Answer:** I’m called Ransom. I’m not named anything.

“What?” What does that even mean? This is why he stays away from—from _the_ _occult_. He’s got his chief witness right in front of him and the answers are still metaphors and gibberish.

“Well. I had a name once. It’s twenty years gone; I can’t remember it at all. I remember _Ransom_ , but I know it’s not my name. Or—hm. It’s not the right name. It’s a name.”

“Amazing. A break in the case. Let’s list some more names, huh? I’ll start: Juno.”

He laughs. “Have a little imagination, detective.” Several eyes on him, the curl of a killer smile. “Something floral. Magnolia—no. No, that’s not quite right.”

“That’s a mouthful. Let’s go further back. What’s the first thing you remember?”

“Something with roses, I think. For you, not the memory. I remember several people trying to assassinate me.”

“Seriously?”

“They failed.”

He exhales. A long, long, _long_ exhale. Might be a sigh. Might be a balloon deflating. He’s all full of hot air, so he’ll go with that. He rests his forehead on the tabletop.

“Juno? Detective Steel? Are you all right?”

He lifts his head and says it a little louder than strictly necessary: “What are we doing here? You’re not telling me a thing, Ransom. You’re playing like you want answers, but you’re just giving me fairy tale bullshit.”

“I believe you’re the one who began this game, Juno. I would very much like answers. Do you assume I’ve been sitting here, unthinking, for twenty years? No. Detective, I have tried. Have you considered it, what it means to live _fairy tale bullshit_? Here’s a thing I know: I believe I killed the king, and I believe that’s what resulted in the rest. But who I was? What I looked like, my preferences, my body? My name, my history? I wouldn’t let those go so easily.”

And with that, he pops out of existence.

“Ransom?” No dice. He’s gone. And maybe Juno’s kidding himself, maybe he’s just bad company. But he’d guess that rant wore the guy out. He looked rough already. “Ransom? You there?”

He killed the king. It would explain assassins. It wouldn’t explain the placidity outside the castle’s gates. If there was one thing his time in the New Kinshasan bar made clear, it was that King Ransom was well-loved, especially planetside. And with the guns, no wonder. There was laser-writ desperation on Brahma, make no mistake. Mag Ransom staved it off for a while. They worshiped him, even on New Kinshasa. They’d figure out how to kill _this_ Ransom if they suspected him even a little.

And Ransom was right about one thing: there were rumors. So, whoever left the food: they’d make a decent lead. It’d take a special kind of superstitious to believe the food you leave outside the castle every morning gets picked up by someone _other_ than the ghost who haunts it. If they’re leaving stuff for him, they’ve gotta have a reason.

In a sane world, his next step would be to track them down. But, oh, look at that: he’s stuck inside.

He throws his hands up and curses a little. It doesn’t really help, so he does the dishes from the day before.

It drives him up the wall, that Ransom is his only real entertainment. He stalks through the castle, goes digging for clues. It turns out a small pile of books are still salvageable, so he carts those through the halls and makes his way back to the bedroom. He finds a bathroom with running water; he showers and gets changed and shivers himself warm again. He takes a long nap with the help of a drought of whiskey and thinks that if all his days shape up like this, he might die of boredom well before Rita returns.

He’s reading some awful historical fiction with a transparent twist when Ransom resumes existence outside the bedroom door. “Dahlia,” he says. “That’s what would suit you. Dahlia Rose.”

“The hell kind of name is—”

“Detective,” he says. “Let me show you my room. All my belongings are there.”

And so, Juno follows him into the deep dark of the castle’s tower. He gives Ransom a long, skeptical look outside the door. “You’ll be safe,” he says. “I promise. I promised Rita and I’m promising you now.”

“Okay,” says Juno Steel’s legendary sense of self-preservation. He steps past the threshold. It’s darker than normal, but it’s just another room.

Well, maybe not. It’s small. A staff person’s room, most likely. And unlike the endless and empty bedrooms downstairs, this one looks lived-in. Dusty, sure. But there’s a variety of furniture and it’s even arranged in a way that makes sense. It was someone’s home. Is someone’s home.

There’s a huge window across from the entryway. It spans from floor to ceiling; it’s boarded up tightly. There’s some fabric shoved between the wall and the nailed-in wood that keeps every bit of light from seeping through.

And, in a corner, there’s a ladder leading up to a trapdoor in the ceiling. If light fights its way through the seams of the window, this is the opposite. That trapdoor leeches light right out of the air.

“I escaped the men who tried to kill me up there. I hid. Whatever _this_ is, that’s where it caught me. Do not go in the attic, Juno. I don’t know what would happen if you did.”

“No telling me twice. Who boarded your windows?”

“The first person I kept here. The attic—” He’s hunched over and in on his own bulk, a weird lump sitting about an inch above the floor. “That’s where I go when I disappear.”

“Okay. So, tell me about your other captives. How’d that go for them, huh?” He plants his ass on a trunk at the foot of the bed and listens.

“The first was Solomon. They came for some of the electronics in the library and spoke to me when I barred the door behind them. They were kind, they had no idea I lived here. There was no way for me to stop them taking the computers other than holding them indefinitely, and I had no desire to do so. I told Sol to take what they would, but they offered a favor as payment. So, the bedroom window. They came back now and again for years, did more. They—stayed a while. Kept me company. And then they moved off planet.” Ransom huffs a small sigh. “There was Ifrah, I made her stay and asked her to remove the light bulbs. Back then, the power would still come on now and again. She was quite frightened of me. And there was Luc, who put just ridiculous amounts of effort into attempting to murder me. It was funny for a day or so.”

A long pause. Juno waits for the punchline.

“And then, Rita. You. That’s it.”

“How many days is that, Ransom? A handful in twenty—”

“Well,” he says, sharp. “You decided fairly early on what kind of man, what kind of monster I am. And who can blame you? But to let Rita’s talents pass me by, detective—I couldn’t do it. I scare people off, I don’t hold them prisoner. But I need to shut down the Guardian Angel System. That’s something from before, I know it. It’s what I’m for.”

Those words sit tingly in Juno’s fingertips where they clanged their way down from his ears. He can’t argue with that. And he can’t—

Rita’s always telling him he needs a vacation. And here it is, a forced vacation in a scenic, rotting castle complete with its very own mystery and political intrigue. He hasn’t let himself think too hard about it, about how impossibly far he is from himself.

It’s early, now. But by this time tomorrow, Rita’ll be sitting in the office if she isn’t at home. She’ll be putting all her focus on this, on him. If she answers the comms at all, it’ll be to yell a whole lot of nothing at the client, prospective, returning, or current. And Hyperion City will keep going. It won’t stop. City’s never gonna stop.

“Juno?”

“What?”

“Where do you go?” He’s coalesced into something humanoid again, his legs vague where they’re curled beneath him. He’s got the heels of his hands splayed behind him; they’re holding none of his weight at all. “Where do you go when you disappear?”

“What does that even mean.” It’s not a question. He’s tired. It’s a shield from metaphor and gibberish, he doesn’t wanna hear it. “You said you had stuff. Your stuff. From before?”

“Yes. In the top drawer of the dresser.”

There’s a neatly folded pile of clothes in dark browns and faded blacks. “I was wearing those when I—when this happened. I could carry them in the attic, but they fell through my hands as soon as I came out here. Sol folded them, put them away.”

“Otherwise everything’s the same?”

“Yes, I think so. Look all you’d like.” He stands, walks to the window like a person. His feet never hit the ground, but there’s a memory of the clack of heels in the air. The pair of black boots sitting on top of the dresser, Juno would bet. They’re classy and well-made, but old. They’re all scuffed up at the toes and heels.

The shirt and slacks are made for two different sizes of person. There are holes at the knees, the elbows, the neckline. There’s a belt, one too small for the slacks it’s paired with. It’d fit a pretty narrow person and has a couple hand-made notches to get it tighter. There’s another shirt—no, it isn’t. He tosses it back in the drawer, no need to be grabbing up Ransom’s underthings. But—wait.

He checks: Ransom’s not paying him any attention. In fact, he’s facing the window, head pressed to the wood. Well, maybe. Or he’s facing into the room and just doesn’t have eyes right now.

Either way, he’s ignoring Juno.

So—the brand. That’s what caught Juno’s eye. He pulls out the tag to confirm: it’s one of the long-established athletic brands, one with a flagship store in Olympus Mons and a current endorsement deal with Cecil’s people. Yeah, you can get what you need near free from any doctor system-side, but you get what you pay for. And out here? Probably not. This would cost an arm and a leg, and that’s without import fees. Depending on the timeline, on the trade restrictions, it probably needed smuggling from the Solar System.

But he’d be safe using it. He could wear it all day without getting hurt.

Yeesh. Okay, Steel. It’s a lot easier to snoop when you’re dealing with a murder victim. Way less invasive. He folds up the binder, goes back to the pants to check the pockets and hope for a clue he can present without creeping the guy out.

Nothing. Great. He always loves to lecture a client about their underwear.

He doesn’t, in the end. He just walks up to Ransom and nudges him with a shoulder that passes through his upper body. “Didn’t find much. Doesn’t look like you had a lot in the way of creds, but someone—you, your boss, your family. Someone took care of you.”

And that’s vague enough that the guy should be suspicious, should ask _detective, what could’ve possibly given you that idea?_ He doesn’t, though.

He slumps forward, nearly through the window. He’s carrying misery in the bend of his body, in his sluggish and unchanging features. His shoulders sit cock-eyed so that the smoky point of one hits somewhere around the inner swoop of Juno’s collarbone. Doesn’t feel like a thing, but. Ugh.

“You hate this. Me poking around. I—listen, I’m gonna ask questions. Gonna annoy the hell out of you until you let me out that door. But I don’t need to be in your space, not if it—”

“I hate that I don’t remember,” he says, face a blur. “Do you know how many stories I’ve come up with, how many explanations I’ve concocted? I’m afraid I’ll start telling you facts I made up long ago, ones I tricked myself into believing as truth.”

“That you were a king?”

“No, that’s true. That I had a father.”

Nothing to say to that. But he stands for a second and lets Ransom lean through him. He was so angry before. Where’d that go? It’s easy to let it fall away here and now, whether _here_ is a vacation, a fairy tale, a fish tank, or a case. He’s never sure if he wants it back, that kind of anger. It takes something with it when it leaves, he feels less like himself.

Less like her. So.

God, he’s tired. “Maybe you’re better off.”

“Would you be doing this if you really believed that?”

“Doing this ‘cause I’m bored, I told you. Anyway, you get your past, you don’t only get the good things. You get all of ‘em, like it or not.”

“I’d like it.” There’s a slow, nearly tidal shift of movement in him that matches the conviction in his voice. “That’s what I want. All the things I am. I want them back.”

“See what I can do. You don’t ask for much, huh?” He turns to Ransom. If he were solid, he’d be draped across Juno’s shoulder. If he were human, Juno’d have a whole mouthful of hair. Things being what they are, he speaks right through the crown of Ransom’s undefined head. “You’ve been here a while. No disappearing. Is it because we’re close to the attic?”

Ripples again, just small ones. Oh. He’s about to lie. “I hadn’t noticed—I think you’re right. I don’t have much occasion to stay in this room, I’m so often up there.” That’s—huh.

He’s not the most practiced liar, body horror aside. _Then why’d you ask your ex to light-proof the room, Ransom?_

Juno sits with it, though. He can ask any time. He’s a little sick of thinking. He pats an awkward hand through Ransom’s shoulder and excuses himself to go make some food. Nothing fancy, just some cans Rita picked for him and judicious application of spices she got for the soup. The only spices she got. At all. For the cupboards full of bland canned goods she expected to last three months.

This is why you don’t zone out during groceries, Steel.

He’s tired, even after his nap earlier. It’s the kind that comes on slow, that takes a while to shake. He’ll sleep when he can, tonight. He might not be worth much tomorrow. What’s there to do, anyway? He’s got plenty to think about, but it can’t take him anywhere. Maybe the most he can do here is wait for Rita to save the day.

It takes a long time to fall asleep. He finishes the entire crappy novel with its trite ending, hunching beneath the windowsill to catch the last of the day’s light. Just one less thing to keep him occupied. He climbs in bed, after. Stares at the ceiling awhile, tries to keep his mind from turning pointless circles.

Where does Juno Steel go when he disappears? Nowhere good, that’s for sure. Nowhere worth following.

Eventually, he sleeps.

The morning hits like a blaster to the temple, like a fist to the teeth, like an HCPD baton to the belly.

He groans. He rolls over. He closes his eyes. It was always gonna be one of those days.

At home, he’s got his work. And it takes longer some mornings. It means missing a couple calls from Rita or turning up late to meet a client or rolling out of bed and pulling on the same dress as the day before. But work gets him up, gets him going.

Here, he’s not got much. He rolls over and drops away again.

He sleeps until Ransom wakes him. “Juno?” and it can’t be the first time he’s called, his voice carries that little bit of frustration. The door’s closed, he’s on the other side. “Detective Steel? Detective Juno Steel?”

“What?” He doesn’t get out of bed, just hides under his pillow from the sun and shouts it to the door.

“Are you all right? I’ve brought some food if you’d like it. It’s some sort of casserole. It’s getting cold, you should—”

“I’m fine. Sleeping.”

“I’m sorry to wake you. It’ll be outside.” And he either goes or shuts up.

Juno doesn’t sleep after that, not really. He rolls over and grabs a second book from his shrinking pile and stares blankly at the first page for a while.

Finally, he stands. He walks outside and toes at the dish of the ice-cold casserole. It was probably good when it was—well, good. He considers passing it by and then considers how easy it’d be to start a collection of rotting breakfasts outside his door.

He carts the thing to the kitchen and scoops the food into the incinerator. City utility if it’s anything like home. It’d better be, or this castle’s getting smelly and quick.

He doesn’t see Ransom for a while, and that’s fine with him. He walks down to the cellar and gets himself a meal and makes it and eats it and—

He wanders. He doesn’t touch a thing. Is this what a ghost feels like? What would Ransom say if he asked?

This castle’s got so many rooms, so many places to hide all sorts of secrets. Hell, he’d take a puzzle at this point. But for such a talker of a household, there’s not a single room with a thing to say.

He’s watching the day’s slow death from the bedroom window when Ransom taps back into existence right outside the door. Juno’s got no idea how it happened, how the day went by so fast. “Juno.” He turns.

Why bother? There’s only one person it could be. “Would you come upstairs with me, Juno?”

Distantly, Juno Steel wonders if this is the part where he gets absorbed by darkness, or where it turns out Ransom’s teeth actually can tear. “Got something?”

“Well, you didn’t see the knife that killed the king and the thing I stuck it in. They sent an assassin robot after me.” And that gets him standing. “But to be truthful, that’s not what I’d like to show you.”

He follows Ransom up the tower.

“Sit here,” Ransom says. He uses hands and hands and hands to corral Juno against the wood that covers the long window. None of them connect, but still. It’s half dodging overlap with the guy and half curiosity that gets him where Ransom wants him. “Press your ear to the wood. Do you hear it?”

He does what Ransom says. He doesn’t hear a thing. He tells him so.

Ransom wilts as dramatically as every houseplant Juno’s ever owned.

“You don’t hear it?”

“What?”

He presses against the wood, too. He doesn’t exactly have a face now. But whatever it is he’s got, it’s nearly pressed through Juno’s nose. “Maybe I’ve imagined it all along.”

“Maybe your hearing’s better than mine.”

“You don’t hear the music?”

And, okay. Maybe Ransom _can_ hear better than him. Because there were musicians in the town square at sundown, he heard them when he took a walk around the castle to scope things out before marching in. The square sits two blocks from the castle. The block closest to Ransom is emptied out and silent. The block closest to King Mag is prime real estate, all businesses and apartments and the seat of the New Kinshasan High Council looming over all the city while it overlooks all the planet. And it’s hard to judge without light, without a view to orient himself. But it makes sense that a tower’s window might face the town square.

“Don’t hear it.”

“What I wanted to tell you,” he says, pulling back from his close-up of Juno and that morning breath he never bothered taking care of. “Is that I was lost for a time. For a long time. I sat there.” He gestures at the corner beside the window. “I first tried the balcony—there’s a balcony out there, you know—but the light burnt me nearly to nothing. So, I sat in the corner and dodged the day cycle and listened. And, Juno. There’s no possibility that they played the way I heard them. I _did_ imagine it, for a time. I sat and listened to the same unending song and burnt when I misjudged the light and Sol was the first to wake me.

“What I mean is, I’ll leave you be as long as you’d like. But I wish you could at least hear the music. Perhaps it would help.”

“Ransom. Let me take a walk down to the square and I’ll listen as much as you want. It’s not that complicated, I’m just—” he shrugs. There’s nothing worth saying about what Juno Steel may or may not be. “I’m tired. How long did you hear it?”

“Sol told me the king was five years dead when they met me.” He heaves a sigh he probably doesn’t need, an immense one that shifts the swirling bulk of his body. “Juno, you—would you like to see the thing that’s not the king?”

Well. Only one answer to that.

The thing Ransom carts down from the attic falls through his arms the second it’s beyond the trapdoor’s threshold. It smashes to pieces when it hits the floor. It’s a near miss: Juno had been hovering close to get an early look. He dodges and only catches the displaced air as the bot falls instead of dying in a really embarrassing—and weirdly unglamorous for something involving the words _assassin bot—_ accident.

It’s the king, carved open at the belly and missing a limb or two from the fall. The thing would’ve been lifelike twenty years ago. Now, it’s still well-sculpted, it’s just powdered in dust and rust. The skin that’s still intact feels exactly like any corpse Juno’s ever touched.

Some vacation.

And in the gut of gears and gadgets, there’s a knife. It’s seen better days, but it’s less of a weapon and more of a tool, as in _tool of the trade_.

He glances at Ransom and gets smacked over the head with some hefty deja vu. Ransom’s looking anywhere but front and center.

And, okay. Juno could be more sensitive to the moment, stop and ask some questions and establish a rapport, could try and tease out what this bot means to the guy.

Or he could put his bare foot on the skin covering what would be a ribcage if the king wasn’t an automaton. He could grip the knife firmly. He could pull till it gives, till he falls backward with enough force to bruise, cradling a knife sharp enough to kill two kings.

That one. He does that one.

“Juno!” Well. Now he’s paying attention.

“I’m fine, look.” Juno sits up and holds out his hand, the flat of the blade cool on the flat of his palm. “This shake anything loose up there?”

Ransom does look. He grows a whole bunch of eyes to help him. He moves to get a few different angles. He asks Juno to flip it so he can see the other side.

“Nothing.” And, hell. The guy sounds like Juno’s day feels.

“Well.” He stands and puts the knife down on the false king’s stomach, about an inch to the left of the gaping hole in him. Out of the corner of his eye, Juno catches Ransom’s edges jumping wildly. “At least you redecorated the place. Fit for royalty. I don’t know, Ransom. There’s nothing here, nothing but what you’ve got in your room and in your head.”

There’s something frenzied underneath the surface of him, but when he asks it, the words come flat: “Would you come with me?”

Juno does. Ransom leads him from the top of the castle to the bottom in silence. He’s changing faster than Juno blinks, just a constant shift. The marble of the entry hall gets Juno’s toes freezing. “Ransom?”

“You should go. You should leave. I know you don’t have any money and I know that’s my fault. Take anything here that might help you. You can stay somewhere else until Rita returns. You can—”

Ransom’s voice dies off there. Juno shivers a little, wraps his arms around himself. “Not going anywhere without shoes, without my stuff. Not gonna find anyone but you who’ll take me in after dark and credless.” Ransom’s trembling too. “I’m going to do the dishes.”

“I’ve just said you can leave, Juno.” Ransom follows him past the stairs, into the hallway that leads to the kitchen. “The door’s a door now. You can go.”

Juno’s busy. He washes the casserole dish, first. The basket’s clean and the only crumbs from the pastries stick to the cloth they were wrapped in. He washes that, too, wrings it, hangs it off the edge of the sink to dry. “But you can’t. Got any more dishes from these people? Figure I’ll go track them down tomorrow, Bring them their stuff. Maybe they’ll know something worth knowing about this whole mess, huh?”

“Juno.” Plaintive and soft and repeated three times over. “Juno, Juno, Juno.” Juno raises his eyes from the dull sink water, turns his head. Ransom’s coming apart again, he’s all smoke. He looks like a healthy breeze could take him with it.

“Hell. Not like I’ve got anywhere better to go. I’m gonna try it, Ransom. Gonna try and take you with us when we leave, all right? Rita’s got your other problem, let me take care of this one. Probably won’t work.” Juno wipes his hands on the damp of the clean cloth, takes a quick tally of things in his life he tried that didn’t work out. “I—it _really_ probably won’t work. But, whatever. Can’t make it worse, right?”

Either someone’s turned on a fog machine or Ransom’s got himself tucked all around and through Juno. Which, huh. That should feel more invasive than it does. It mostly means he can’t see his own hands in front of him. He sits with it for a second, then: “All right, all right, I get it. Hug time’s over. Can you grab that basket with the fruit from the dining room? And whatever else you’ve got lying around?”

“Juno, anything. Anything you want.” And he goes.

Phew. Way to manage those high expectations, Steel.

Ransom can pick up something like a tower of dishes, of baskets, of platters and Juno can’t temper the way his heart gets going, the little curl he catches sneaking its way into the corners of his mouth before he shrugs it off. Because this—throwing away this much nice dishware over the who-knows timeframe of the thing? This isn’t a bored _let’s see what happens_. This isn’t a prank. This is someone who believes in something and, hey, would you look at that: that _something_ turned out to be real.

This is a lead.

“This probably won’t work.” Third time’s the charm, maybe Ransom will hear him. Maybe the detective lady’s stupid, stupid hope will get a clue and go die in a cold ditch like it should have a while ago. “Just—remember that, okay? You’re looking rough, you’d better go nap. You’ll wake me up early?”

“Of course, dear,” he murmurs before slipping away. Juno blinks, shakes his head a little. He’d said the same thing to Rita, right? He sorts through the piles of dishes, picks out a promising-looking batch to haul outside before daybreak, an armful of crockery to offer for a Ransom.

Or two. There’s something fishy with the king, isn’t there?

But the king is dead. Who cares about the king? He never meant to, but he cares about this guy, this lonely guy. This man who sat five whole years without realizing they passed, who kidnapped five whole people in the fifteen years he spent conscious, whose maybe-ex could never touch him, whose week with Rita is the longest consecutive time he remembers spending with any one person.

This man who reaches out a hand, a limb, a curl of smoke. He just keeps reaching.

Come on, Steel. So what? Everyone’s got a sob story. Get it together.

Juno Steel takes the only kind of shower the place has to offer—one that leaves him shivering—and heads to bed early. He fights his way to sleep past the buzzing in his fingertips, the pulse pounding in his throat. A lead, a plan, and the promise of daylight. It’s worth the time spent unconscious.

So, you’d think he’d manage to wake up early. You’d be wrong. He wakes to pink-tinged daylight pouring through the window, Ransom actually yelling his name, and his own fists bunched in the pillow covering his head, each one pressing fabric stuffed with synthetic feathers into an ear.

Oops.

“I’m awake, I hear you, quit it. I’m coming.” He sits, stretches, crawls his way across the ridiculous bed setup—gotta ask Ransom about that—and opens the door.

“You need to hurry, she just left. I don’t know her, but she’s tall, she has long, grey hair. I watched through the keyhole, she headed west. She’s brought a new—” Juno stretches arms behind his head, yawns big and loud. Too early for all these words.

Like magic, they stop. He opens his eyes to find Ransom silent and blurry around the edges. “You okay? I’m listening. Tall lady, probably older, long hair, west of the castle, brought us a new . . .”

“Basket. A new basket. I didn’t bring it in yet. You’ll change before you go, yes?”

“Can’t change how I’m made, Ransom.” But he’s got a point, boxers and his most beat-up cropped shirt probably aren’t the right image. “Yeah, yeah. I’ll get presentable. Give me a minute, huh?”

He changes into real clothes, puts on his boots for the first time in three days. He uses fingers to fix his hair a little, pouts a bit about forgetting both a razor and his makeup bag. He trades _byes_ with Ransom, the terse kind that make it obvious they’re both choking down hope.

He stuffs one arm with the new basket and the other with the old dishware. He steps into the light.

The city’s even shinier than he remembers. There’s that curve of Brahma hanging past the skyline. How bloodstained must it be if this is how they treat their royalty?

Now Ransom’s got him believing it, got him holding a coronation in his head, got him feeling sorry for heads in crowns and asses on thrones. Juno gets a move on. His job isn’t Brahma, not now. No need to let the trail get cold.

That’s not a thing to worry about. The trail’s real warm. In fact, it’s the same kind of humid heat that lives in a cloth-covered basket, in a casserole dish fresh from an oven, in the buttery break of a pastry torn in two.

See, there’s a bakery west of the castle.

A bell rings when he opens the door to an empty storefront. “Not open yet,” comes from the back before the baker marches out. She’s tall, grey-haired, well-scarred, and could definitely toss Juno Steel over her shoulder like a particularly lightweight sack of flour.

He swallows. So his throat’s suddenly a little dry. So what?

“Oh. You’re the king’s lady friend. Thought he had someone in that cave. You’re welcome. I usually don’t bother with the warm food. I don’t think he eats. You’re lucky my wife isn’t here.”

“Hi? I’m Juno?” Come on, Steel. Salvage this. “What?”

“Elsie. My wife’s not a fan of my monarchist shit, ze thinks I’m nuts to leave good grub, good cookware out there. Wasting creds, ze says. You brought some back, though.” That little shine of approval is the first warm thing Elsie gives to Juno. Other than, _apparently,_ the piles of hot food.

“Thanks. Really appreciate it. Can we back up? You leave the food for the king. The king who’s the ghost who haunts the castle, the king who’s Mag Ransom?”

“Get in the kitchen, Mars. My scones need to go on the rack and my wife isn’t the only one who hates listening to monarchist shit. And my customers are exceptionally good at picking Solar out of a crowd, wouldn’t suggest hanging around.”

Like he’s done so often in the past handful of days, Juno Steel follows.

The kitchen’s got five ovens and puts off enough heat to make Juno swear off complaining about the castle’s cold water. He mops up forehead sweat with the hem of his shirt while Elsie pops scones off a sheet pan and gets talking.

“There weren’t a lot of people off planet when we lost the war, you know. New Kinshasa pulled most of Brahma’s folks out as fast as possible. The king did that, your king—well, not _your_ king. King Mag. When things went south for him, I’m pretty sure my squadron were the only ones off planet—at least, the only ones who ever planned on coming back.

“Saw a lot of weird shit out there, not just your everyday, human violence—oh, plenty of that, _Mars_ —but not only. So, I come home to the council back in power, the king dead. And no one remembers the crown prince haunting his own castle? Gotta be magic, fucked magic.” Scones done with, she slots the long pan into a waiting sink with a clang. Juno only flinches a little. “Rest of my guys didn’t care much. They were happy to be home alive. Not gonna throw a fit with the Angels back in action, even when we’re floating on top of it all. Even played dumb for the High Council when they came sniffing. Mona used to spend all zir time cooing over how charming the prince was when he was a kid and now ze thinks I’m nuts if I mention him. You won’t find him in any history books. Hell, before the food started disappearing, I thought I was making him up.” She looks at him. She could pin a person from fifty feet with a look like that. “But you’re shacked up with him, aren’t you?”

“I think I am.” His throat’s dry again, but this time it’s either the heat of the ovens or the truth of her words. “It’s not like that. I don’t even know if he—Listen. He doesn’t remember who he is.”

“You’d know _if he_ better than me, Mars. And is that all? Easy. King Peter Ransom. That’s the guy I’m leaving food for. Least I can do. I’ll keep leaving it if you keep bringing back my dishes. Good luck with the curse-breaking. You’ll need it.”

He might thank Elsie. It’d be polite to thank Elsie. But there’s not a single person in Hyperion City or anywhere else who’d accuse Juno Steel of being polite. He probably doesn’t thank her. He probably just wanders out into the New Kinshasan morning, nothing like a ghost.

Ghosts can’t go outside.

He checks her facts, of course he does. When he can’t find any Peter Ransom in the floating city’s data library, he searches for the last squadron recalled to Brahma from the Solar war. An Eloise Golya led that one. So, sure. It’s probably the closest to evidence he can get with magic floating around the edges of the case.

Finally, he turns his feet towards the castle.

Ransom’s waiting for him in the entry hall. He looks like he didn’t move an inch. Really. He’s thready and near transparent. He’s flickering in place.

“You look like shit. Let’s get you upstairs,” Juno says.

Ransom disappears without a word and Juno climbs the tower. He spends every step trying to think of how to say it, of what to say.

In the end, he pushes open the door to Ransom’s bedroom. He looks at him where he stands by the window. He’s squared up, ready to take what Juno has. And what Juno has is this:

“It’s Peter. Your name’s Peter Ransom. You were the king after Mag. He was your father.”

No one in the room draws a breath. No one in the room changes.

Well, that’s wrong. Ransom changes. He never _stops_ changing, and that’s the problem.

He wilts after a half-minute of it. “I really thought—lesson one of getting your hopes up, I suppose. You did warn me. Oh, Juno. Thank you for trying. For coming back. I—I can’t even begin. It means more than I can say.”

Juno crosses the threshold, crosses the space. He leans against the boarded-up window, tosses his head back, bares his throat to the room. After one long moment of eyes screwed shut, of something made of bile and bourbon, of _what were you thinking,_ _Steel? You never_ think _. You little idiot, how could you ever believe you’d change a thing?_ he reaches out a hand to pat awkwardly through Ransom’s shoulder.

Instead, his hand hits something like marble, something like a mirror. Ransom’s skin shifts unsettling and cool under Juno’s palm. Juno’s fingers curl without him saying so. Ransom gasps it: “Juno. Juno, you’re—”

“Yeah. Yeah, I can—” The guy gets handsy fast.

Not _handsy_ in terms of placement. _Handsy_ in terms of the sheer quantity of hands, the amount of reaching he’s doing. Juno Steel’s never been held so thoroughly.

Ransom’s shaking against him, so he holds him right back. It’s—it’s instinct. It’s right. It’s what Juno wants.

He just might be what Juno wants.

“I’m sorry.” Ransom says against him, grip greedy and body shuddering. “Juno, I have to tell you. I didn’t mean—if I couldn’t touch you, it could never be—I’ll let you go. Please, just for a moment. I’ve wanted—”

And Juno knows enough to hear what he means, knows too little to say something smart, something sweet, something reassuring. And he wants, too. Instead, he asks, “Got a mouth?”

“What?” asks Ransom. And look at that, he does.

Juno kisses him.

And he’s nothing like a human, except for—hey, would you look at that?—he’s always been one. After a little combined effort, some stuttered communication, a lot of touching, they reach a conclusion: the bed’s right there and they’re both of them close enough to human to figure it out.

Eventually, Juno falls asleep in Ransom’s room with six, with eight, with four arms clinging to him, with Ransom draped over him like a cold fog.

He wakes overheated, two arms wrapped around him, a torso and legs pressing pins and needles into his limbs.

It’s not like any fairy tale he ever heard. But he never heard all that many, did he? Not ones that ended with anything but limitless wandering and limitless royalties paid to Northstar. So maybe it’s standard practice to spend a night with someone not so strictly human and wake up in a king’s arms.

He stops thinking about it quick, because Ransom’s gorgeous. He’s got long, uneven hair. It matches the dark of the room, but silver peeks in at his temples. Juno brushes it from his face, likes the contrast of his hand against Ransom’s skin, likes the slight lines at the corners of his features, the pair of beauty marks on his cheek and chin, the others that line the column of his throat and spill onto his chest and shoulders. It’s not even a choice for Juno to press his lips to every one of those. Hell, he’ll blame it on a curse. It’s going around. Ransom barely stirs.

He’s snoring with his mouth wide open. His teeth are just a little sharp. And that’s the thing to get Juno blinking too fast, the thing that takes up real estate in his throat. Did he always have those? Were they a souvenir of twenty years twisted up in darkness?

“Ransom,” he says. He shakes him, gentle. “Ransom, wake up already. It’s over.”

It’s that stupid, stupid hope. And it’s the instant after Ransom’s lashes twitch, the instant before Juno can catch even a sliver of white from beneath his lids. That’s when Ransom disappears.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's always staying and going with these two >:[


	3. Nureyev

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> HI, I'm back! Mind if I double the word count?
> 
> wwwwarnings: some violence, blood, minor character death, injury, Juno-typical lack of care for himself that could be interpreted as purposeful self-injury. Nothing is described too graphically, but it’s there. 
> 
> There’s some nice stuff too, promise!
> 
> I’ve borrowed some (imo, not very spoilery - but look out!) things from Ultrabots pt 2 [S3 ep14]. Check the end notes for details if you’d like more info and don’t mind very light spoilers for the fic

There was never a king on New Kinshasa. There was never a prince.

There was a woman in a seat atop the city. She spoke with a voice that carried some weight. Arguably, she committed a number of crimes, but she’ll only own up to one: once upon a time, she, the council, and the unanimous goodwill of the people fell for a pair of con men and a forged lineage promising the planet for Ransom.

But for some petty infighting, the city would have fallen for them, too.

She was the one who presented their case to the council, she was the one who gave the old king his tour of the Guardian Angel System, and she was the one whose comms pinged an accommodating alert some twenty years later.

Someone in the city searched the database for Peter Ransom.

They’d never find him, not by that name. Still, the whole business began with her failure and at her word. All this, she thinks as she prepares for her morning meeting, she’ll own.

She’s promised her Angels in return for help. It is, after all, for the greater good.

Her last resort comes on time and in disguise. They’re getting used to existing indoors without sunglasses, but they still brush fingers up their narrow nose to punctuate their sentences, they still wear indents in the bridge of it from their long time behind glass. They still answer to G in a pinch.

Twenty years ago, it was a different duo and a different offer. Those two must have done something wrong; what use would anyone have for a haunted castle? She simply has a good feeling about this pair. G brings their muscle and she trusts the two of them with alternating letters—with one half, each.

A curse needs a target, you see.

She warns them at length: _don’t get smart_. The parameters of the job don’t include guessing at the answer to her puzzle. _You won’t like what happens_.

If they guessed right, nothing would happen. If they spoke the name out loud, she had the inkling something might. And it wouldn’t be so remarkable, not really.

Men so seldom are.

But—this man was once capable of escaping even the most skilled assassins, and he has a history of knocking at her door. So, no; they will not like what happens, not when their options are a clever twist of the pretender’s knife or a demotion—each about as fatal as the next.

She went through the trouble of scrubbing his name from the census database; she’d prefer that it retires with her.

She rushes the two agents out the door, even as G lingers to ask questions about the process. She’s desperate for her routine: she’ll drink her coffee curled up on her windowsill. She’ll read her mail and listen to the musicians in the square. And it is a beautiful morning, she’ll think. It’s her shining city. It’s everyone’s shining city, isn’t it? There’s only one pretender she knows of and he owns nothing, least of all the planet. He’s as much city property as the awful statue in the square.

He’s just the same as anyone on Brahma who can’t manage to belong. Isn’t that the whole point? Soon enough, he’ll be gone.

He’s gone, and Juno Steel has one hand on the ladder to the attic, one foot on a rung, before Ransom appears in front of the boarded-up window.

Juno’s pretty naked. But, whatever. Ransom’s never worn anything but shadows and smoke, right? If anyone should be self-conscious here, it’s him.

“Juno!” Speaking of shadows and smoke, he’s back. It’s pulled tight, the knot tied in Juno’s chest. Ransom’s fine. Who cares what he looks like? “Get down immediately.”

“How about you quit ordering me around?” But he lets his foot slap the floor, careful to avoid any bot pieces. He gives up his grip on the ladder. “You—uh. You were in bed, and then—”

“I don’t know why.” He’s as unmoored as Juno is, it’s clear enough in the wavy, side-to-side rocking of him. “I didn’t mean to—”

“And then you were human. I tried to wake you up because I thought—” He waves a hand to swat the idea away; it was pretty stupid. “You know what I thought. And you disappeared.” The cold touch of one of Ransom’s hands on his gets him shivering.

“Only making sure,” he says. He doesn’t let go. His fingers end in claws, but he’s careful. Juno lets his curl to match. “I didn’t mean to leave you. I was human? I—was I—?” He doesn’t finish the thought.

“PI, not a mind reader.”

“Did you like me?”

“You kidding? You worried I’m, what? Out of your league?” Juno pulls at the tether of their hands a little, shakes them. “Like you plenty like this, don’t I?”

“Mm, I _did_ get that impression. Could use more concrete evidence, detective. And, for all I know, I’m where your tastes begin and end.”

“Sure picked a lucky castle then, didn’t I? Nothing to worry about. You looked. . . Oh, fine. You were fine.” He pulls away from Ransom’s grip to press his fingers to his eyes, to hide his warm face in both hands. Ransom’s laughing. He draws Juno in. The cool of his body is a much nicer place to hide. “Want me to find you some hard evidence, huh? Subtle. You really know how to sweet-talk a dame.”

“Juno,” he says. His voice comes serious and tugs the wrong way on that tangle: the knot’s right back where it was. “You’ll leave with Rita once this is over. If I’m able, I’ll come. If I’m not, I won’t. I need us to agree before—well. It would have been better if we had this conversation earlier, but—”

“But it’s a shitty conversation.” He pulls away. He doesn’t know where his clothes went. He’s the one who took them off—Ransom couldn’t touch them. He stomps to the bed, drags the duvet around his shoulders and across his front. His shirt falls from the bedding, so there’s one problem solved. He sits. “Well, sorry. Looks like I’ve got a headache, _honey_. Because that’s not something I’m doing, you hear me? We’ll stay until you can leave. Doesn’t have to be with us, but I’m not leaving you like this.”

“Ah, yes. You’ll drag me bodily from the castle, I suppose. All my problems, fixed! Why didn’t I think of that?”

“No one likes a smartass, Ransom.”

He sighs with more ham than a well-stocked deli counter. “Oh, if only someone told me earlier. It’s a mistake I’ve made recently, you see. Might’ve saved me some trouble.”

And that knot unravels suddenly. It tickles something deep in Juno and he can’t help but laugh and laugh. It’s not a single wry snort and it’s not hysteria. It’s just—

“Funny.” He says it when he can gasp a breath, when he can sit up from where he fell back onto the bed: “You’re real funny, you know that?”

“It isn’t usually like this, is it?” He’s smoky again, which last night made clear enough means something pretty flattering. “It’s been days since I met you. Days.” Soft, like a secret, “I don’t want you to leave me.”

Juno drags the makeshift cloak with him across the dusty floor and back into orbit. “You’re the only one asking me to leave. And—sometimes, yeah. Sometimes it’s not so good like that.” He shrugs. The bedding’s heavy, rich across his shoulders. “Sometimes it’s too fast, beginning to end. Burns itself out. Burns everyone involved, too.”

“I don’t want it to.”

This one’s a single wry snort. “Ransom, you don’t get to—” Wait. “Ransom.”

“Yes? Neither a detective nor a mind reader, dear.”

“No, no, no. Ransom. You distracted me! We were—” Juno gestures vaguely. Ransom plucks his hand from the air and holds it close. “—busy. And we forgot to think about it. You said it: you’re not named Ransom. You’ve never been named Ransom. So—why would Elsie be so sure. . . And the food.”

“Only the food? Juno.” No one ever gifted Peter Ransom any bedding, because when he pulls Juno close, there’s nothing keeping skin from skin. Juno lets the thing fall. “Darling. It may not be my name, but it changed something rather more than that. Who is Elsie?”

“You know: grey hair, big arms, whatever. Ex-military. Brings you stuff. I can call you Peter.” He’s reeled in tight. He closes his eyes. All those hands. “You’re distracting. And _darling_? That what you’re going with?”

“Not if you don’t like it. I—every time you’ve called for me, you’ve said—I like the way you say Ransom.” The hands pull away, give him some room to breathe and blink. “Would you like to concentrate now?”

“Call me whatever you want.” _Every time you’ve called for me_ , goddamn it. What does he expect, saying shit like that? Juno gets hands on him, walks him backward. “No. No, I wanna—remind me where we left off?”

“Remind you later, with the case? Are you worried I’ll _distract_ you?” He’s halfway there already, speaking every word against Juno’s neck. Juno shivers, but he’s not _afraid_ of those teeth. “As for where we left off earlier—I believe you were going to find me some evidence that I’m not a terrible eyesore. I’m feeling a bit sensitive, detective. Perhaps you could massage my ego?”

Juno gives him the little shove that deserves. “ _Oh_ , that’s awful. No way. Try again.”

“Perhaps I could massage yours?”

“Not any better.” Juno sits, pulls Ransom down to his level. “But you keep talking.”

He does. He’s chatty, he’s not gasping for air or grasping for dry land. It’s nice like this. Running commentary, bad lines. A few good ones, too. Maybe, maybe, maybe. Maybe they’re both real people. Maybe they can leave together. Maybe they won’t burn out. Ransom calls Juno whatever he wants ( _oh, love_ ). They rest, but they don’t sleep. He stays strange, shifting, and steady against Juno’s side.

“Peter is my name, I think.” Time’s passed. Without the pried-open window, it could be any when at all. Could’ve passed years wrapped up in each other. Still can. “It’s right. And you’re right: Ransom isn’t. But it is _a_ name. I know how you feel about listing names, Juno, but what about the reasons behind them? Why might someone name me Ransom?”

“Someone wanted you to be king, right? And someone else _really_ didn’t. If you’re no Ransom, what was _that—_ ” Juno points toward the base of the ladder, at the not-king he can’t quite see from where he is. “—supposed to be?”

Ransom’d gone pliant against him. He’d relaxed. His body had stopped radiating coolness and started to steal some of Juno’s warmth to keep.

Juno notices because Ransom burns like ice the second he remembers it’s there.

“That—” his voice sounds—huh. It sounds like gears grinding a knife dull. “That is _nothing_. That is a thing pretending to be a liar.” And before Juno can voice the _what?_ living on his tongue, Ransom finishes the thought. “And I think I’m one, too.”

He’s so cold.

“Okay. Okay, we’ll figure out what that means later.” Ransom tends humanoid when they’re all tangled up, so Juno moves him a little, pulls him close. For his part, Ransom just hides his face, holds tight. They’re like that awhile before Juno breaks the silence. “Wanna leave the room? Got a whole castle all to ourselves.”

“No.” He speaks into Juno’s shoulder. “I don’t have to leave when I’m in this room. I can stay. Well, except for—” He’s either warming up or Juno’s going numb from it.

“We’ll figure it out.” Something happens the next time Juno pets the back of Ransom’s head. It’s not weird, statue skin, it’s—“Hey.” It’s creepy to see it happen. Like a cocoon made of smoke. But, go on, detective. Get a clue for once in your life. “Hey. Close your eyes?”

He’s downright pissy about it. “They’re closed. They’ve been closed.” Yeah. That’s what Juno thought. He brushes fingers through his hair. When Ransom doesn’t notice, well.

“Keep them closed, okay?” And Juno wraps some up in his hand and gives it a friendly tug, gets a little gasp in return.

“What’s—”

“You. It’s only you.” And Ransom, eyes still shut, does a quick survey of his own body that deposits a sharp elbow in Juno’s belly, jabs a knee into his thigh. After the tandem _oof_ s Ransom earns, he turns on Juno. He blindly pets and soothes and apologizes and smiles the whole time. He demands Juno’s hands on him. Well, maybe that’s not fair.

“You don’t burn anymore,” Ransom says. Of course Juno’s touching him. He never had to demand a thing. “Before, you felt so hot it almost hurt. And it was—oh, it was—”

“Better? Worse?”

“Real. This is, too.”

He has to open his eyes eventually, and Juno’s either a decent detective or a good guesser, because Ransom leaves and comes back a little less visually coherent. And maybe they make no progress, but it turns out it’s no problem at all to pass the time till Rita shows up.

Two days. Juno pulls something in his side hauling the battered bot into the hall and Ransom soothes with cold hands and re-establishes Juno’s train of thought. They spend the time talking the problem of Peter Ransom in increasingly desperate circles alongside a whole lot of distraction that really doesn’t bear mentioning.

They settle on one thing: he needs his name back. _Peter_ was a magic word, they’re guessing there’s at least one more out there.

Juno Steel doesn’t let anything like dread creep into his throat. He can’t have this, of course he can’t. But he can pretend for a while.

Every now and again he remembers: he used to be good at pretending. And he remembers something else, too: there’s a word for tricking yourself into believing you might keep a good thing.

“Hope you missed me, boss! I said I’d never leave you for a whole week ever again and then, look at that. I did. But I’m back now and we’ve got just one more tiny little step and you look like you’re actually doing pretty okay.” Rita’s timed it perfect. When Ransom called, soft, _Rita’s back_ , Juno had just gotten out of the shower, just put on fresh clothes from the batch he scrubbed clean-ish in a bathtub the day before. Juno grabbed Ransom up by the middle before running downstairs to meet her, spent a few long seconds soothing the twisting shape of his body and kissing everywhere he could reach. Because _Rita’s back_ means that Rita’s back. But it also means they’ve got to stop honeymooning and actually solve the thing.

Front door shut behind her, Rita giggles, revs into a song and dance that scrambles up relief and dread in Juno’s gut. It’s a lot like indigestion. “Maybe I shoulda left you a little longer, huh? Cause you’re looking _really_ okay, boss, and I don’t wanna know ANY details except for who you met and how you met and whether they’re nice and where they’re hiding—that’s it. You know you’ve got a little something right here?” She pats the side of her neck once, twice. Oh.

He _did_ know. Ransom made his enthusiasm for that spot pretty obvious a time or five. But he’d forgotten, because Rita and the past two days exist in separate universes. “Yeah, Rita. You’ve met the guy. Introduced us, even. How’s that for a meet-cute?”

A scrunched-up Rita face. Yeah, okay; he’d missed her. “That’s a very, very, very good meet-cute and I told you you’d like him and I’m obviously a matchmaking GENIUS. And I know what I said. But I’m gonna need a teeny tiny bit more details. Not too many—‘cause if he can’t touch you I _don’t_ wanna know what’s got you all—” She waves her hand up and down and opens her mouth to elaborate.

Nope. “Rita!”

And that’s when he turns up. About time. He’s so shifty, he’s gotta be beside himself with nerves. It’s only been days and Juno has to tense his fingers to keep from reaching for him, from smoothing him over. He talks too fast: “Miss Rita. It’s wonderful to see you again. I’m sorry about—well, about everything. I understand if you can’t forgive me, but—did it work? Is it done?”

Wow. Right to business. “King Peter Ransom, everyone. Take a breath and shake hands with the lady, huh?”

And that’s all it takes to settle him, to get him murmuring, _of course, dear,_ before aiming a solemn hand Rita’s way. She takes it and shakes it. Her screech could crack mirrors. She starts with, _ain’t calling you ‘your majesty,’_ and goes on to ask roughly a thousand questions. Juno lets him tackle the recap and just watches them, watches their gestures get wide and careless as they get into it. Could lose an eye standing too close to that.

He’s gotta tell her. He’s not leaving, not until they fix this.

“So, we’re almost done, you know? I couldn’t figure out how to do it without plugging in, but then I thought: the whole thing’s here and Mister Steel’s here so really that’s not a problem at all! We’ll just pop over to the reactor—you know where that is, Mister Ransom? It’s where they’ve got all the important tech stuff—and then all I’ve gotta do is plug my comms into the thing for a second and _bloop_. We’re set!”

“I think I knew once.” Trying to remember gets him a little more man-shaped. “It was red, that room. All over. The lights and the—oh, I don’t know. I might be able to remember if I could leave, but—”

“So that’s where we focus. Break the curse, first. Easy.” Ransom throws a look his way. Juno gives as good as he gets. What? It just makes sense.

“There’s something else, Mister Steel! There were these two creeps following me—well, I don’t think they were _trying_ to follow me. I think they were just headed here—so I played tourist and took lots and lots of pictures until they got sick of waiting and went away. I didn’t hear everything, but I remember what they were saying at the end ‘cause it got a little weird. This guy was yammering about something, just on and on. And his pal, they go, _you! Shhhh. You’ve gotta be careful, you, someone’ll hear_. And he goes, _Agent, gee, what’re you all worried about? Ain’t like anyone’s even listening, right?_ And it was funny, ‘cause I sure was. But I thought it was weird, Mister Steel, ‘cause that just ain’t how people talk!”

It takes Juno a second to sort through the Rita-isms and hear what she’s telling him. When he catches up—no. No, there’s no way—“Rita. Were they wearing sunglasses? Weird suits? Headed this way _now_?”

“Normal suits, boss. One of ‘em had glasses, yeah. And how should I know?”

Close enough. He hadn’t thought of it, of course he hadn’t. If not for Sasha’s work trip/reunion tour through his third or fourth worst nightmare, he wouldn’t have a clue now. Of course Dark Matters would spend the time and creds manufacturing fairy tales in the Outer Rim. A reclaimed monarchy on the heels of a galactic civil war—it’s exactly the type of thing they’d want to wrap their creepy fingers around, wring whatever _greater good_ they could get right out of it. Their angle—what it was then, what it might be now—who knows? Not Juno Steel.

But it makes more sense than _this guy_ earning a curse for killing the king or for that classic scenario: shooing some wrinkled old bat from his castle because they’re—what? Too shabby? No. He’d just scare ‘em a little and apologize about it and feed them fruit and chat them to death if they hadn’t run off yet.

Ransom takes up all the space in Juno’s chest for a second. Just for a second. Juno doesn’t have time to think too hard about the feeling. If you wanna disappear your average person, you send assassins. Hell, maybe you send a fancy robot shaped like a memory. You wanna disappear a sometimes-intangible former king under a twenty-year curse? Well. Maybe you send alphabet soup with extra-extraordinary magic and all the emotion disciplined right out of them.

“Juno? Is everything all right?”

“Probably not. We’ve got to—I don’t know. I think they’re Dark Matters.” Never late for her cue, Rita gasps dramatically enough to launch a career on those soaps she likes so much. Ransom just holds Juno’s gaze with a lot of eyes. He’s asking a question. “Shadow organization with a taste for big magic. High-level tech, fancy guns, secret agents, blah blah. Grew up with one of their subdirectors and she’s the scariest person I know.”

He’s quick on the uptake. “The tower. I won’t leave you two alone and I’m not certain how long I can stay here. If it’s me they’re looking for, we’ll make them work for it.”

“What if they don’t need to look for you? What if they just set up shop right here, work whatever spell they’ve got? What if they do something to you before we even—”

“And what if the castle collapses in the next seven seconds? What if the city falls out of the sky? Juno, what’s the alternative?”

Easy. Juno paces, lays out the plan: “I stay down here. Play your captive. Not winning any awards, but I’ll tell them whatever they wanna hear if they’ll get me out of here safe from the big, scary monster, right? I’ll keep an eye open. Hell, maybe I’ll steal a gun. You two hide. Either I get rid of them or I don’t. I’ll buy us time.”

“That’s a terrible idea. You’re telling me they’re _magical secret agents_ , Juno—why would they carry guns without protection? You think they did it. That they’re capable of—” An expansive flourish, lots of limbs and teeth. Cute. “—of _this_. Rita, tell him it’s a terrible idea.”

“On one hand, boss—it’s a really bad idea. On the other hand, Mister Ransom—you ain’t seen him with a gun. He’s faster than spells, I don’t care how good the suits are. And on _Mister Ransom’s_ other hand—he’s the only one with more than two, you know—why don’t we all go hide in the tower while Mister Ransom spies on ‘em with his magic hearing-everything-in-here powers?”

Juno and Ransom offer up a loaded silence. “Yes,” Ransom says. “Yes, of course. Thank you, my dear. The tower, then.” And they go.

Rita tries to stop and poke at the robot when they hit the hallway. Juno pivots to pull her along, but Ransom beats him to it. “There’s no time. Would you please grab the knife?” She does. He herds them both in.

“What do we do, what do we do?” She’s holding the knife to her like a teddy bear. Come on, Steel: what _do_ they do?

“They’re here. Let me listen.”

Juno and Rita stay quiet. They might not even breathe. It doesn’t take long—and it doesn’t take a detective to put together from Rita’s report and Ransom’s thirty-second silence that the U of the bunch never shuts up. “Yes. It’s what we thought. They’re headed here—they’re looking for me. They think I can’t leave the attic. U is the subordinate, G the leader. Any ideas?”

Rita maps it out: “I think I oughta go in this trunk. And I think Mister Steel oughta go. . . there. Other side of the bed, away from the door. And Mister Ransom, I think you oughta get ready to pop out and spook ‘em.”

It’s not a plan, it’s nothing like a plan. But they have no time. Juno shrugs, nods, and opens the trunk for Rita to curl up inside.

Just in time, too. He only just manages to crouch down on the far side of the bed. Ransom’s long gone.

He hears someone out there—U, he’d guess. “In here?” There’s a clang. “Anyone pilot this thing, or was it automated? Hell, I wouldn’t wanna be in that—look at that wound! Right through the skin, through the mesh, and the goddamn gears are scraped up. This worth a hole in the gut, G?”

The reply comes flat and accompanied by the click of the _exact_ kind of pricey loafers only the most boring and well-bribed detectives wear. “If he’s here at all, he’s been trapped where they caught him. Twenty years. He’s long gone, no one could last that long. It’s paranoia—someone read the wrong history book and got curious and now Rossignol’s chasing ghosts.”

“You sure? You don’t know?” G doesn’t reply out loud. “Rossy. She gets that _we’re_ the ones who do the work, right? That we know they messed up last time, that we know what we’re doing now? _Don’t get smart_. She always like that?”

A loud shush, the creak of the door, footsteps inside. Juno holds his breath, because you don’t have to be a detective to realize someone’s lived in this room in the last twenty years. There’s the boarded-up window, there’s the lack of lightbulbs.

There’s the bed. Just—the general state of it.

But these jerks are no Sasha Wire. There’s only U’s chatter, the heavy thump of knees on wood, and a deliberate scraping to the tune of handwriting, maybe drawing. “Yup, look at that. He’s up there. And speaking of ghosts—the locals sure have a lot to say about him. A whole crock of shit, huh? Watch it, is all. Bet you hate a good jump scare almost as much as you hate me.”

Footsteps away from U, away from Juno. Probably towards the door. “U, I appreciate that you say what you mean. We have a perfectly functional working relationship. We’ll continue to have it until my next assignment. Sorry to say so, but I’m guessing you’ll stay in the Outer Rim. You’ve smudged the sigil, let me redo it.”

U mutters a _yeah, yeah_ and Juno puffs a couple of steadying breaths. He’s a PI catching the fist with his face, a punk running headfirst at his next misdemeanor, a twin stepping in front of his—

Whatever. They’re chalking sigils onto the bedroom floor; it’s now or never, Steel.

He manages to tackle U to the floor—too bad for Agent G’s sigil. U’s big and fast, which is just the _worst_ combination. Juno’s got about half a second to brandish the element of surprise before his back smacks the floor hard enough to get him trying to stuff his breath back where it belongs. He’s got to do some mental math to put the pieces together, to figure out that U grabbed Juno by the middle and sent him _over_ his shoulder. Those magical mitts of his are on Juno’s shoulders now, the guy’s knee unfriendly in his gut. Juno’s got dark spots hanging in his vision. They mingle with the not-quite-smoke lingering near the ceiling.

Couldn’t stay away, huh?

Ransom must’ve paid attention to U’s dig about the jump scare, maybe he’s even working off G’s expectation of a frail shade. Because he’s not going for abrupt or sneaky, he’s gathering there, big and inevitable. He’s like a good dust storm on the horizon. Way more claws and teeth sticking out of him, though.

“You suits ever hear of knocking?” The line wasn’t good to begin with, but it would’ve been better if Juno had any air in his lungs to work with. “Honey, you call interior decorators? You shouldn’t have. No, really—you shouldn’t have. I hate chalk—” U interrupts him with a fist. It collides with the edge of his eye socket, the jut of his cheekbone. Yeah, okay. Juno zips it and is rewarded with nothing at all but the unamused set of U’s mouth and Juno’s future shiner shone back at him in glass. What a jerk: wearing sunglasses in a building without light.

He’d guess they’re not looking to flat-out kill civilians today. U just doesn’t wanna hear Juno Steel talk. Well, pal—get in line. “What the hell?” U asks, livid and aimed at G.

“Agent U,” comes from the far side of the room. G sounds bored, even as Ransom darts claws down to shred the air in front of their nose, even as he starts twisting and melting and stretching in a way calculated to turn stomachs. “I hate to say it, but I think this castle may be haunted after all. I’d advise looking away while we work. He can’t touch us. Would you eliminate the civilian out in the hall? You have three minutes before I need you.” Oh—he can’t touch them. Juno sucks in a breath, ready to project.

In that breath, U’s hands and knee go hot enough to brand.

Juno Steel means to shout, but instead he screams. He twists and writhes beneath U like his body is doing its best Ransom impression. Every movement shifts U slightly, lights more of Juno on fire. So much for _good guesser_. So much for _not killing civilians_. So much for _leaving the room first like your boss_ just _said—no wonder they hate you so much._

He can’t really see or think, but he can hear it when Rita throws open the trunk’s lid hard enough that it cracks against the bed frame. He can hear it when she yells, “Mister Peter—”

He doesn’t hear the rest. It might be the really alarming amounts of pain burnt into him, but Juno’s eighty percent sure an actual hiss of cold-on-hot drowns out the rest of Rita’s sentence the instant that name leaves her mouth. If there’s steam, it’s impossible to pick out with no light and Ransom all shaken up.

Speaking of Ransom—all that speculation on his claws? True. Juno’s got plenty of evidence in favor of his less-alarming daydreams by now. That older, out-of-his-mind fear that kept the words _big_ , _scary_ , and _monster_ orbiting the black hole he calls a brain?

U’s living that. Until he isn’t.

He falls to the floor with a breath or two left in him. A few things happen: U glares up at G like he hates them more than anyone in the galaxy, which is weird. U slaps his hand to the red path Ransom carved towards his heart. U dies.

Agent G laughs.

Ransom’s surprised by it. Juno gets a good, long look at him. He’s surprised by all of it: by G’s hyena bark, by U’s complete lack of get-up-and-go, by the trail of blood that ends on his hands. The thing _Juno’s_ most surprised by, though, is the neatness of it. It’s not exactly what you call _clean_ , but he did it efficiently. Less of a weapon, more of a tool. It’s something Juno hadn’t really believed till just then: Ransom’s done that before.

Well. Okay. He never pretended otherwise, right?

Juno hauls himself up and tries not to whimper too much about it. His body barely cooperates. There’s a lot of moving parts beneath the seared skin of his shoulders and stomach. Not a bit of him seems wild about the act of sitting, but hell—he does it anyway. He’s shaking and he can’t make it stop.

Ransom, who’d taken a moment to wrap himself around G with a handful of claws at their throat, stretches. Even now, it’s a little distressing to watch. But it ends with the cold of him pressed against Juno’s blistered skin, against the scorched holes in his clothes—he won’t get picky about it. Rita’s just standing there in the trunk, pissed as hell. Her knuckles are white where they’re clenched around the knife’s handle.

“I’d like my name, please. I’m assuming you’d like to live.”

They’ve finished cackling, but their words still come out amused. “I’d check Agent U’s hand. Most useful trick he’s pulled off yet, I think.”

Juno shrugs Ransom off, ignores Rita’s _boss!_ , and crawls a little to where U’s painting the floor red. Juno grabs his wrist and wishes he hadn’t. Between U’s limp hand and the mess of his chest is a slip of paper. Juno snags it and scoots backward. He’s not careful about it, the pain takes away all his breath. But, hey—this far away from the puddle of blood, he’s less likely to lose his lunch. It’s the little things.

There are two black letters on the paper. They’re crisp and handwritten in actual ink: P and T. From there, they start—well, bleeding. There’s the stiff-backed swoop of another letter dissolving into the blood, and it doesn’t take a genius to guess at an R.

Whatever else might’ve been on that paper, it’s nothing but a smoky-edged smudge on a red backdrop.

He turns to tell Ransom and yelps. The guy’s stretched even farther to aim a bunch of eyes over Juno’s shoulder at the thing. Juno rests his back in the bend of an arm, touches him, speaks quietly. “It’s fine. We keep them here. I’ll dry this off—see where they applied pressure. We’ll figure it out, but we need their part, huh?” Juno tries to stand, fails until Ransom offers a hand up. Juno’s slow about it, but he makes it over to G. “So? Where’s yours?”

“I’m not sure what tricks you have up your sleeve, but that paper’s much too saturated to keep a print.” They shift a little, like they’re testing Ransom’s hold. “It was certainly worth the hole in U’s gut. I’m not so sure about my own.”

Juno’s having trouble convincing his body it’s not actively burning to a crisp. Only makes sense, right? Burn your finger on a stovetop, the memory sticks around for a few minutes. Burn your whole body on a Dark Matters agent, the pain gets you panting, too cold and too hot all at once. Might lose his lunch, after all.

Rita must’ve climbed out of the trunk at some point. She wraps her free hand around his wrist. She pulls him to the bed. “Boss. You’ve gotta sit down.”

G’s neck bleeds a little where Ransom digs in. They try to lean away from his claws before speaking, “The spell shouldn’t have done _this_. Rossignol underestimated both of us. All her games with ink and paper and she never read my dossier. Imagine: keeping secrets from a mind reader while trying to trap an escape artist. Ridiculous.” A glance at Juno, a lingering look at Rita. “It’s been interesting, getting to know you. But I’ve been here long enough. I think I’ll leave Rossignol to you, Mr. Nureyev.”

Juno blinks, and he’s changed. He’s the same man who’d shown his face in bed now and again, but he wears it differently. There’s a crease between his brows. The set of his jaw says he’s got his teeth clenched tight. He’s got fingertips pressed to G’s bleeding throat. It’s dark and he’s halfway across the room, but Juno thinks his eyes might be the deepest brown in the universe.

G socks him in the gut before they run for it.

“Rita?” Once he’s caught his breath, once Agent G’s long gone, he takes a step towards her. Okay. “The fix you developed—it won’t affect the levitation reactor?” He says it casual, only slightly winded. Like he’s asking about the weather; cloudy with a chance of _falling cities._ No big deal.

It might be news to Juno, but Rita’s got her weather report all ready to go: “’Course not. City ain’t moving an inch. I’m just gonna break the lasers _real_ good. And scramble up all that facial recognition stuff. And erase the census database matchin’ up people to their ID codes. And scramble all the ID codes. And maybe include a little audio loop of me yellin’ at anyone who tries to fix it—but I can take that part out if you want, Mister Ransom! I was just so _mad_.”

“Rita, it’s perfect. Thank you. And, please—” Those eyes flit over to Juno, narrow a little, swing back to Rita. He brushes a bit of hair behind his ear. “Call me Nureyev. Or Peter—whichever you’d prefer.”

“Sure thing, Mister Nureyev.” She smiles big and the corners of his mouth curl just barely and Juno can’t really breathe right. For the first time since he realized Ransom was hiding a human person behind smoke and mirrors, he doesn’t have a clue what’s going on in the guy’s head.

Juno’s staring. Ransom—no, Nureyev—stares right back. It’s still a half-glare, it’s not reassuring. Also not reassuring: Rita’s _really_ glaring at him. “Mister Nureyev, I’m gonna go get the boss some medical stuff, pronto. And then raid our luggage in case you need to borrow some clothes. Be gone a bit, is all I’m saying.” Subtle. But Juno’s pretty woozy and Nureyev really is standing there, naked.

“Juno.” He doesn’t move, doesn’t stop glaring. There’s a little, frustrated twist to his mouth. Sheesh, Steel, what’d you do this time?—oh.

Glasses. Those talky haunted house aficionados he’d met either a week or a lifetime ago said the monster wore glasses.

“Can you see?”

“Not well.” He shuffles toward Juno, every step careful. “It’s dark, everything’s just slightly _off_ —how is it I was every height possible except for my own?” Juno drags himself out of bed and hobbles to help before Nureyev topples over U’s corpse.

“Gotcha,” Juno says, grabbing his elbow. He stifles a shout when Nureyev’s hand lands on his shoulder. “Watch it. I’m extra dainty today.”

“I’m so sorry.” He punctuates it with a little brush of fingers against the nape of Juno’s neck. Don’t, Steel. He said it himself: he’s not Ransom. So, the three of them’ll do the work, they’ll hop on a ship. When Peter Nureyev’s got the whole galaxy at his fingertips, he’ll forget all about the back of Juno Steel’s neck. Get the detective on his track and let him turn his circles. Let him go until he falls apart or the city changes too much for his schtick to mean a thing. Don’t get stupid about it. “Juno. It’s my mess. It’s all mine. I involved you, and—”

“Shut up. This is nothing. Last time I tangled with Dark Matters, we got stabbed a lot, we went swimming in sewage, and I lost ten creds to a rabbit. I’m calling this a win.”

“You—you what?”

“If you need glasses, you probably have glasses, right? Lemme check the attic.” He pulls away from Nureyev’s hand.

“Juno—”

“Curse is broken, attic’s fine.” Here’s the setup: what’ll Juno Steel do to escape an emotionally charged conversation?

And here’s the punchline: his hands on either side of the ladder, his foot on the bottom rung. A deep belly breath that’s agonizing on its own, even before—

The less said about climbing that ladder, the better.

Once he’s up there, he has to swipe the wet from his eyes and breathe a while, wait for the worst of the pain to go. When he can, he looks for two things: for a pair of glasses and for anything that’ll prove it happened. Big magic leaves a mark, right?

He finds the glasses in a perfectly normal attic, nothing shady to remind him of Ransom. It’s bare except for junk—a few stacks of empty crates, a pile of clothes, some books, and a long-dead tablet. Rita might want that, so he grabs it. He swipes around some of the grime on the glasses and hopes that’ll pass for cleaning. And Nureyev’ll need clothes, so—

At the top of the pile are two fine jackets, identical except for their sizes. Fit for royalty. Sized for a father and son. Decorated with rusty brown.

Nope. Nureyev can have his pick of Juno’s laundry. Juno hangs the glasses on the neck of his shirt, tucks the tablet in his armpit.

He’s not sure if it’s easier going down the ladder, or if he’s just getting used to the pain. He hands Nureyev the glasses. “Juno, you—you need medical attention immediately. That was completely unnecessary, I can’t believe you’d—oh.”

“They work?”

“They’re better.” He looks around with considerably more focus than before. He spends a long time looking at U. He pushes his hair out of his face. “I think they need cleaning. And I certainly need a new prescription. But these will work—”

“Put some clothes on? I think that’s step one in your revolution, right? I can run and get you some. Rita’s not stepping foot up here, not until she knows we’re not—” Shut up, Steel. “I’d just better get them, huh?”

He’d kill for a ripple of guilt, a pleased heat-mirage shimmer, a glimpse of hazy want. Hell, he’d take a microexpression. Nureyev just looks reasonable, understanding. Controlled. “Of course—thank you. I’ll wear whatever you pick. Will you see if Rita got the medical supplies first?” The lock of hair that keeps bugging him slips in front of his glasses. One slip inspires another: a little frown dislodges that mask of his.

“Sure, Nureyev.”

Rita’s flat on the big bed with her comms playing something at full volume when he gets to the bed room. “That was quick. Got some stuff for you, boss. Hey—why don’t you look happy?”

“Rita, when’s the last time I looked happy? I just got cooked rare. And there’s a corpse on the floor. You _really_ think we’d—”

“Thought you’d _talk,_ boss. People do that sometimes.” She pauses the stream, sits up, gestures for him to sit. He starts struggling with his shirt and she solves the problem by holding him still and cutting it off him with rinky-dink scissors from a first aid kit she’s pulled onto her lap. “For your information, Mister Steel, the last time you looked happy was a little bit ago. You know—when I showed up to find you all ga-ga over your cursed fairy tale king who is totally, obviously, and completely one-hundred percent in actual—”

“Okay!” The disinfectant hurts. “Can we do this later? We’ve got work to do.”

She spreads some numbing stuff on him next, and that’s pretty okay. “Ain’t cursed anymore, is all I’m saying. Next step is being happy forever, boss. That’s what all the streams say. And they get a lot wrong, sure, but when they’re all sayin’ it—maybe you believe ‘em.”

“You don’t believe that. No one believes that.” He looks down. He gets an eyeful of his blistered belly and tries to forget it. “We just tie a bow on all this, I bring him to my place and—what? Trade one cage for another—a castle for a shithole apartment in the worst city on Mars.”

“Bet you Mister Nureyev would say home beats this city a million times over, huh? This city’d make you think you’re sitting on a cloud, then you look down and _oops_ , been killin’ people all along.” He helps her wind the gauze around his middle. “You can let him decide, but start with your grumping around and saying actual mean things and acting like _you_ don’t want _him_ and—one, that’s not letting him decide at all. Two, that’s how you get every stupid misunderstanding in every stream ever. Ain’t gonna let you do it. That’s your one warning.

“And another thing,” she says. She tosses him a shirt and a few frozen meals from the cellar. He blinks at the bundle for a second before putting on the shirt, pressing cold to hot. “You’re acting like he could just live here with no problems after we stage our—what’s it called? Coup?—maybe you know more about royalty than me, mister prince-consort, but I’m thinking that’s not how it’s gonna go.”

“Haven’t decided on my title yet.”

“That’s better, boss.” She smiles over his shoulder. “Hi, Mister Nureyev. Was just gonna help the boss pick out something for you to wear, but that’s nice, too.”

The clothes from when he was a boy don’t fit well. The pants are several inches too short and the shirt is still huge. The dull colors don’t suit him. Those are probably the only things that fit at all—he’s not wearing any of the rest.

He blinks at the room, at the light of day, at Juno’s clothes spread across every empty bed frame. “Why are the beds like this? I didn’t know before, but I thought that was the amnesia.”

“Great, a mystery we’ll never solve. Sorry—took longer than I thought.”

Nureyev picks his way through the beds, sits down cross-legged next to Rita. “It’s not a problem. It’s quiet. It was quiet here for a long time, but I’m not used to having guests I can’t hear.” He puts his elbow on his knee, his chin in his hand. He looks out the window for a moment. He makes and breaks eye contact with Juno and settles his gaze on Rita. “After we’re finished here, you’ll need to take me to the movies. I want to see the one you talked about—with the robots who vaporize Luna.”

“Ooh, Mister Nureyev! _Killer Robots Blowin’ Up the World: This Time It’s Luna_! You’ll love it. It’s a date.” He’s looking right at Juno again. “If that’s after, I had a thought about before. Because I looked you up, and _you_ don’t exist according to the census database—which is okay! Because I’m gonna delete it. But you also don’t have any passport, which ain’t so okay, because we need to get tickets home before all of that. So, I’m gonna forge one! Which means you need an alias, because I’m betting someone will know you’re you and I’m guessing _Peter Ransom_ ain’t gonna cut it, either.”

That mask of his is cracked right open, has been since he stepped into the room. A few things flit across his face—Juno might call one anger, might call one grief, might call one dread. He’d been called Ransom. He hadn’t been named anything, not for twenty years. It’s practical, they’ve got to do it. But he _just_ got it back.

Nureyev doesn’t speak for long enough that Juno can’t keep his mouth shut:

“Something with roses, right?” Those eyes back on him, that mouth soft and slightly open. The curse is gone, but those teeth are still—focus, Steel. “Last name Rose, Rita. You pick the first.”

He pulls his gaze away to look at Rita, to make sure she’s taking him seriously. Nureyev keeps eyes on him, Juno can feel it.

Something else he can feel without looking to see if it’s happening: Rita’s about to bail.

“Need some peace and quiet to do my forging. Don’t come find me, I’ll find you. Bye!”

His name’s out of Nureyev’s mouth before she’s even all the way out the door. “Juno,” he says. “Will you cut my hair?”

“What? How—” Nureyev reaches for Rita’s shirt-ruining scissors. Juno Steel expected to deny a whole lot of things—but this is a new one. “Nureyev, it’ll look awful. Those are made for gauze, and even if—listen, last time I cut anyone’s hair, we were chasing each other around the room with clippers. If you’re _lucky_ , it’ll go half as well. And I lost a chunk of earlobe that day—wasn’t haircut related, but still—you see what I’m working with.”

“We?” Oh. He looks away from Nureyev, tries not to look too closely at the nowhere good his memory’s pointed towards. “Are you all right?”

“Fine. My brother.” One hard knuckle to the edge of the bandage on his stomach brings him right back to here-and-now. “I’ll mess up your hair, Nureyev.”

He scoots closer, grabs Juno’s hand, and pulls it away from his middle. He hangs onto it. “But you’ll do it?” When the question sits, he keeps going. “It’s in the way. And I could pull it back, but it’s damaged anyway. Better to start fresh, yes?”

“As long as you’re still singing that tune after the number I do on you—I’ll do it. Just put it down on the record: told you so.”

He’s got a good smile. Juno knew that already, but the way it hits his eyes really proves the point. “Of course, dear.”

He tries. He really does. Nureyev takes off his shirt and Juno sits him on the edge of an empty bed frame. The scissors are tiny, the guy’s got a lot of hair, and Juno’s seared shoulders aren’t up to the kind of careful, sustained work that might get close to salvaging the exercise.

Juno can’t stop counting the ways Nureyev’s nothing like Ransom. But, this—the way he leans into Juno’s touch no matter how many times Juno tells him to hold still. It could almost get a lady dreaming about _happy forever_.

Juno manages longer at the top than the sides and neck, but he’d really need clippers to do that right. In the end, it’s patchy and uneven in the back, it sticks up funny in the front, and he absolutely got the tip of Nureyev’s ear once or twice.

“Well. You’ll definitely be memorable, Peter Nureyev.” He kneels in front of him, brushes hair from his shoulders. “All done. Get dressed if you want to. Maybe don’t look in the mirror while you’re—”

Nureyev steals the kiss from the middle of Juno’s sentence. Juno leans his cheek into Nureyev’s hand, presses his lips into Nureyev’s smile. Just for a second, he can have this.

And when the long second’s over, it’ll be time to wake up. Enjoy it while it lasts, Steel.

Nureyev pulls away after a while, keeps his fingers curled against Juno’s jaw. “I’ve never been a king. Just so you know.”

Juno has to yank his head down from the clouds to process that one. He puts a hand on Nureyev’s thigh for balance. “Uh—you. Okay. How’s that work?”

“Mag liked old things. And he wanted to take down New Kinshasa.” He shrugs. From farther away, from the set of his mouth, he might look disinterested. But Juno can see his eyes. “It made him laugh. Forging a very old line of succession to trick something rather more new. All based in actual early history—like the planet itself conspired to take down the city, like it chose him to do the job. I believe he thought himself very clever. I know I did.”

“You keep saying _take down_. . . That’s why you asked Rita—” Oh. “That’s why—”

“Yes, precisely. He said it often, just like that. I’m _certain_ he thought himself very clever.” And Juno was right about his eyes: they’re the darkest, most gorgeous brown he’s ever seen. “I wonder which would have been better, in the end. His plan would’ve killed so many people.” And those eyes of his might be pretty, but right now they’re empty as anything. “Twenty years is a long time, and we failed. Can you imagine the punishment? Any resistance left on the planet—” A long sigh. “My plan certainly killed, too.”

Ransom, cold to the touch and warped with half-remembered fear, contempt, longing. Nureyev, flat-voiced and blank-faced and right here. Juno pushes closer, moves hands to either side of Nureyev’s neck, smooths them down the slopes of his shoulders. He gets all up in his space. Every bit of Nureyev is as still as a statue except for his hands, which trace the edges of Juno’s jaw. “ _Plan_. That what you’re calling it? They took everything. You were a kid. What were you supposed to do? Nureyev, that’s on the people running this place, the ones who tried to assassinate you. It’s on the magic spies who—It’s on him.” Juno thinks about it. “He wasn’t your father, was he?”

“In his defense,” Nureyev says, his voice small and bitter. “He only ever claimed to be when I was in on the joke. No—he told me he knew my father. That’s all. A revolutionary who looked like me, just like me. One who died to bring down the city. Maybe the smallest lie he ever told. But I would ask for the story, you see. So, it might have been his most frequent.” He presses his lips to Juno’s forehead and then moves, stands, starts browsing through the laundry. “The minute the council understood what happened, they held a coronation and trapped me in the public eye, just as we trapped them. I was too dogged by assassins to make plans. Now, though—”

He puts on one of Juno’s shirts, a soft, worn one that fits better than the shirt he’d been swimming in. He keeps the too-short slacks. They’ll have to get him some shoes. “Juno, I can’t stop thinking—did you know this castle was a museum?”

“Yeah.” He uses the bed frame to pull himself up. He’d watched Rita’s streams after she left, did the barest amount of research before hurtling across the galaxy after her. “When they built the city. A fancy house for planet history, folklore, art—all definitely stolen, huh?—It sat around for a long time, and then, hey! They found a king to stuff in it.”

“Propaganda. Something sweet to disguise the bitter reality of their _security system_. Never mind that they’d never allow tourism from Brahma.” He’s pacing, gesturing tight with those talkative hands of his. “I keep thinking about it, Juno: that it won’t end anytime soon. No matter how thoroughly Rita shuts down the Angels. The city loses their fanciest toy: they send humans, robots, magic. There are enough people up here willing to kill to keep their place. Your baker sounded perfectly lovely, but given the choice between the reality of life planetside and a comfortable position in the constabulary, I wonder which she would choose.” He stops. He looks at Juno. He’s breathing hard. “It was always what I wanted, to fight back—why should that change? Don’t I need to stay?”

“No.” It’s a denial that snuck into his throat early, before he could even guess where Nureyev was headed with that one. It comes out louder than he means it to: “No—you said it yourself. You were never the king. You gave everything up already, you don’t have to—” It’s panic that supplies the words, twists Juno up inside, sends him across the room to wrap fingers around his wrists. “You don’t have to come with us, you don’t have to stay _anywhere_. But you’ve gotta get out of this castle, Ransom, out of this city. You don’t have to come with me. You don’t have to leave Brahma. But I told you: I’m not leaving till you do.” He’s got a weird look on his face. “What?”

“I always liked it, the way you said—even when you hated me. You and Rita—it had been a while since I could pretend I really was a person.”

“I didn’t mean to—sorry, Nureyev. Never hated you.” That makes him throw his head back and laugh. It’s a nice view. “If you want to stay—” It’s the right thing to say. Even if he follows it with _I’m staying with you_ or _I don’t think you should_ or _what good can one guy without shoes do?_ —it’s the thing he’s got to say. Instead, he says, “You shouldn’t. You can’t. You’ve been a person. You’ve been one this whole goddamn time, but you stay here and you start thinking you’re not. We’ll help you. We’ll do whatever you want. But after, come with us?”

He walks away from Juno. He walks all the way to the window, puts hands on the sill and leans his top half out. If he were feeling romantic about it, Juno might guess he’s closing his eyes to bask in the light, to feel a breeze through that choppy haircut of his. But Juno would have to cross the room to find out, and he’s not sure he has it in him.

“Yes,” Nureyev says to the world outside the window.

“Just like that?”

He turns back to the room, to Juno. “Truthfully, I don’t want to stay here. He always told me what the job was. And then, _after, Pete_. That was when we could dream. Another lie, most likely. But if we manage to—to stop the city. . . Well. Dreams don’t have to stay the same, and I don’t lie nearly as often as he did.”

Juno sits with that—literally, standing’s really taking it out of him—while Nureyev picks his way through the rest of the clothes, combs fingers through his own hair. He doesn’t consult a mirror. Smart man. He eventually comes to Juno, holds out a hand.

That’s a fairy tale curse, too, isn’t it? One always wakes up when the other starts dreaming.

Take it or leave it, Steel.

Juno swipes at the hand he offers, holds it tight, stands.

Rita’s waiting for them right outside the door. She and Juno trade suspicious looks. Nureyev, several long strides ahead of them, asks them to wait while he retrieves his old boots. Juno lets it sit for a while before stating the obvious: “Eavesdropping, huh?”

“Only for the last little bit.” For once in her life, she stops and she thinks for a second before barreling forward. “Boss. You ever listen to yourself talk?”

“Yeah, yeah, I know. _Shut up, Steel. You talk too much, Steel_. You’re not saying anything groundbreaking, Rita.”

“No, Mister Steel. What I mean is—never thought I’d say this, someone put it on a calendar—sometimes you give actual good advice. Maybe listen to all that hot air every once in a while, huh?”

“Rita, what—” Juno’s interrupted by the sound of heels and the man himself. He’s wearing a pinched look and boots that are at least a size too small.

“I keep forgetting Agent U is up there. I had to do some acrobatics to keep from tracking blood everywhere. Rita—I know where we’re going. Are you ready?”

“Never been more ready in my LIFE, Mister Nureyev.” Her face goes the kind of sneaky that usually means she’s planning a surprise party, a ladies’ night, or a plot to sneak in an ‘office pet’ for the fifth time. “Or should I say: _Mister Rose_?” She brandishes her comms, screen bright with a digital ID.

“Rita, thank you. This looks excellent.” Very measured. Very polite. Juno’s neither of those. He snatches the comms.

“What the hell, Rita? You named him _King Rose_?” Nureyev tucks a placating hand in the bend of Juno’s elbow.

Never late for her cue, she grabs her comms back and talks fast. “I panicked! Do you know how many names there are to think up? There’s Reggie—but that had the double-R thing going and, Mister Nureyev, I just didn’t like it. And there’s Baz—but I knew a kid named that when I was in grade school and he hated my favorite stream one week, _Martian Sewer People: They’re Really Down There,_ and I just couldn’t bring that kinda energy with us. And there’s Leroy, which woulda been good, ‘cause you really look like a Leroy—”

Juno pats Nureyev’s hand, looks him in his eyes. “You don’t look like a Leroy.”

“Thank you, dear. You say the sweetest things.”

“—But I forgot I thought of Leroy till just now, so I just picked. And—and—he’s a king, ain’t he! You’re a king, ain’t you?”

“In short, no. I’ve only recently remembered; I hope you won’t hold it against me.”

“Mister Nureyev, don’t you even think about it. See, boss? It’s even better this way: ‘cause I named him King and he ain’t one, so no one will suspect a thing.”

They’re still sniping at each other when they step outside, when Juno almost runs right into Nureyev where he’s stopped, where he’s taking in the light, the abandoned homes and storefronts, the spotless stretch of street that leads to the square.

He’s only still for a moment before he takes off. And Juno’s perfectly willing to ignore the metaphorical burning in his lungs and the literal burning of his skin in an attempt to keep pace with those legs of his, but Rita’s nearly hitting a sprint, so he should probably—“Hey. Slow down?”

Nureyev does. He offers Juno his arm and adjusts his pace to leisurely. Juno’s not from Brahma and neither is Rita, but here he is, that impossible Brahman tourist. There are only two blocks to the square, but they walk them in silence but for his quiet, “I think I’m finished with hiding in shadow, but we’ll need to be careful—will you follow my lead once we’re inside?” It’s an easy _yep_ from two dopes so totally in the dark.

He does stop in front of the statue. He offers it a harsh laugh. “It’s a good likeness,” he tells them. “He’d hate it. Oh, I can’t imagine much he’d hate more than all this.”

And that leaves tension around his eyes and a tight smile on his mouth all the way to the reception desk. And Juno knows they’re called confidence men for a reason, but it’s almost magic. He waltzes up to the desk, turned shabby by his bad haircut and his ill-fitting clothes. No one should trust him, looking like that in a city like this. But he simply lists off the time and location of his engagement—he’s a lead sanitation engineer, you see, and a last-minute replacement for the one who didn’t show earlier in the week—they may not have him on their calendar. He’s done some contracting work for the council before and knows his way around—is it all right if he gives his new team the grand tour of the lower level? No, no! Not the high-security level, my—he didn’t even know that existed. No, the lower level where the bulk of plumbing and incinerator tech is housed, that’s where they’ll be working.

And the receptionist, they smile politely and gesture to a maintenance stairwell and go on with their day.

Once they’re on the janitorial level, he goes sharp again. “No one will care if we linger on this floor. I need to retrieve the password from a high-security office. There’s a utility room—ah, here.” He holds the door. “Would you please wait until I return?”

“Sure, Mister Nureyev.”

“Nope. Coming with you.”

The look Nureyev gives him is half frustrated, half. . . something. Something that makes Juno forget to breathe. “I don’t suppose you’d listen if I argued that you’re badly hurt and that I’m familiar with the building and security? That this would go faster if I were to do it alone?”

He waits a beat before saying it. Nureyev’s holding the door open. He’s not gone yet. “Well, I listened. You’re not going alone. Rita—”

“Be fine here, boss. Mister Nureyev gave me this pretty knife.” She waves it around in case he forgot. Great. “You gave me this old, broken gadget. I ain’t sneaking around, no way. But there’s some kinda panel doohickey here, so maybe I could distract some people, huh? Turn off some cameras? Turn on some alarms?”

“My dear, we’d be lost without you. Like this.” He adjusts her hold, then wraps both his hands around her grip on the handle. “Keep it. Please stay safe. Can you make it look like the security systems are malfunctioning? And stop any alarms from the top two floors?”

A _pfft, can I?_ from Rita and they’re off. He explains himself, soft, as they move through hallways and up stairs. He keeps a hand on Juno, starting and stopping their progress with only the slightest pressure. “We planned this first, you know. Conning our way in and taking what we needed. He knew everything—the security roster and schedule, the camera placement, the building layout. He explained it to me after we began our farce, just in case we ever needed to do it this way.” He pauses outside a door, lets Juno go. “The strange thing is, it’s all the same. Nothing’s changed. For both of our plans, we only ever had one mark. I wonder if she’s still here.”

He knocks on the door.

The woman who answers looks a little haunted, but like she’s got enough money to keep from worrying about it most days. “What a delightful surprise,” she says. She’s got the tiniest tremble hidden in that bravado. “And who are you pretending to be today?”

A fox’s smile. “No one but myself, Madam. May we come in?”

She opens the door. She only glances at Juno before her eyes get stuck to Nureyev again. Still, she knows who she saw: “Juno Steel, Mars. Do you know, you and your friend are the only two Martians on record visiting New Kinshasa? Agent G pointed you out—I should have looked closer from the beginning. But the idea of tourism from Sol—”

“Lady, I _really_ don’t care about the economic well-being of your floating death paradise.”

She’s watching Nureyev take up space in her office, watching him wander around. “It seems you don’t care about Brahma’s well-being at all, if it’s him you’re helping.”

“Madam, you seem to be mistaken about why I’m here. It’s true that—” Juno wonders if she sees it, the half-second of hurt that flashes in his eyes. She’s looking so closely. “ _Mag Ransom_ wanted to take down the city. I would prefer to avoid that.” And here something eats his face right up. It’s angry, sure, but it’s something else, too. It’s righteous. It’s calculating. He’s not focused on her; he’s focused on the room. “I would prefer that, but you see—I was quite idealistic when I stopped him from dropping New Kinshasa. Madam, I believe it’s you who gave me these twenty years to sit and think about what sort of monster I might be.

“So.” His face settles again. Bland, friendly, polite. He crosses the room and rifles through her mail, smiles. “My partner and I will do what we came here to do. Our associate has given us a rather thorough fix for the problem of this city, and it is ready now. Here are the things you can do to keep yourself alive and the city where you’ve put it: give me any copies of the plans for the Guardian Angel System, most notably the ones you’ve set aside for Dark Matters. Let us leave, forget our names, do not find us. Our associate has complete control of your systems as we speak and will continue to have it indefinitely.”

She hasn’t stopped looking at him. “You’re right. You were my problem, and I did my best to solve it. I can’t promise you forever, you know. Would you condemn all these lives, all the lives below us because someone has a bright idea once I’ve retired?”

“Retire?” He leans both hands on her desk. “Madam Rossignol, you owe me twenty years. If you love your city or your life, you’ll serve them in full. It will be interesting to see what Brahma looks like when they’re over.”

She’s not feeling guilty. Juno knows her type, and they don’t know the meaning of the word. She knows turnabout, though. She’d define it as fair play. Juno’d guess, from the way her eyes stick to him, that she’d thought Nureyev was inevitable. “I suppose I’ll see it up close. I’m one person. Why do you think I can stop anything?”

“You’re one person. It’s why I haven’t killed you; the death of one person wouldn’t do anything useful. I’m sure you can sell it. After all, it’s rather more believable than long-lost royalty, and you did so wonderfully with that.” Did he just palm a pen? Yup, there was definitely a pen there a second ago. “You’ve seen me lie before, Madam. Tell me, do you think I’m lying when I say I could drop the city from the sky in a moment?”

He is lying. He couldn’t. Get them in with the reactor and _Rita_ could, but she would never do it, not in a million years. But you could look at him and believe it, just like you would if he told you his hair was black or there was a city hanging in the sky or your name was Juno Steel.

“I’ve never once thought you were lying to me.” She sidles to the desk, all flared nostrils, wide eyes, and shaky hands. He takes an accommodating step back. “Here.” Two data drives taken from her desk drawer and placed into Nureyev’s waiting hand. He’s a good liar, but she’s not.

“That’s not it.” Juno manages to steal her attention for a second with the observation.

She shrugs. “I imagine you met Agent G? They wanted collateral, so they have a partial plan. I can’t give you what I no longer have.”

On that ominous note, they leave her to her next twenty years. Juno thinks about it on the way back down to the maintenance level. “G got everything they wanted, or they wouldn’t have let you go; there’s a lot of restructuring at Dark Matters, they wouldn’t risk it. Speaking of, I think you handed Agent U his pink slip.” Juno chews on his lip. “You trust her?” He asks, and he’s not surprised by the answer:

An easy shrug, a flash of teeth. “No. And I’m not sure there’s much we can do. Not yet.” Warm fingers that curl around Juno’s tense claw of a hand. “Let’s find our associate, shall we?”

They do. And in the end, Rita was right. Nureyev keeps watch on the other side of the door, and the two of them really do creep into the reactor room, plug her comms into a thing, get a _bloop_ , and hightail it out of there.

Juno’s flagging. It’s a long day that starts with Rita and ends like this. It’s all over. He says so to Nureyev and Rita, his free hand curled against the unburnt side of his belly so they don’t see it shaking. “It’s over,” he says, and the panic that’s been dogging him since he chose to stay doesn’t get a chance to set in. Nureyev doesn’t let it.

“Juno.” His hand’s soft. Juno wishes the square, the statue, the people, the buildings, even Rita would all disappear for a second. Just this man on a backdrop of clouds. “I’m looking forward to seeing your home, but you’ve barely caught a glimpse of mine. How could it be over? You haven’t set foot on the planet.”

* * *

And so, they do. It involves stealing some laundry from law enforcement and throwing it over their clothes. They don’t find anything Rita’s size and she volunteers to stay on the city after trading a long, wordy look with Nureyev that Juno just _hates_. Nureyev talks them onto a transport—a specific one, if his study of the offerings is any clue.

Juno wishes he’d bothered Rita for more of that numbing cream.

The transport lands, and there they are.

A planet’s too big to know, but Nureyev obviously knows the neighborhood they’ve touched down in. In a way, Juno does, too. It’s a lot of the same flavors of bad he grew up with—streets, structures, people left to fend for themselves while something bigger than them gets greedy with the resources they need to do it; all the ways that can get complicated, get nasty. Multiply that by a planet, a nightmare surveillance system, and an armed militia. The buildings and the streets are much worse. The air quality is better.

But what gets him is the people. Every once in a pair of blue moons, a rich dope gets it in their head to invest a little attention in Oldtown. Whether it’s guilt wrapped in philanthropy or a scammer dropping a handful of creds into the wishing well in hopes they’ll come back a few hundred thousand times over, the opportunists of Hyperion City keep an eye on Oldtown—if only to take it for the very little it’s worth.

The only thing New Kinshasa’s dropping is lasers. And that’s not news. But Juno Steel’s neglected thinking about the reality of it: about living life under constant scrutiny that doesn’t bother hiding its intentions behind public works projects or mealy-mouthed promises aimed uptown. Promises to _clean up the community_.

So, this place is nothing like Oldtown. People _live_ there. No one’s thriving—but whether it’s breaking into the sewers, shooting bottles in an alley, or stumbling home from the Pour and Floor—people wander outside and breathe in a little red dust and keep their eyes wide open to see who’s looking back. It’s about the nicest thing he’s got to say about the place.

Here, the handful of people who rush from building to building do so with nothing in their eyes, ears, and mouths but the next two steps their feet will take. They know exactly what’s watching.

The HCPD could spend every hour of every day in the streets and they wouldn’t get results like that. It gets him sick, how empty they are.

No. That’s not right. The guy at his side and the entire tale he’s spun is proof. The people aren’t empty, not really. They live under cover and plot fake monarchies and tell lies to orphans and schedule their dreaming for later. They’re subtle about it.

He isn’t.

Peter Nureyev steps foot on Brahma wearing the top half of a constable’s uniform and enough life in his face to either call a laser down from on high or stop a certain Martian lady’s heart.

Nothing falls from the sky and Juno Steel keeps breathing.

“This way.” He takes Juno’s hand. He moves slow and stately, chin high and constable’s cap tossed in a gutter. Juno follows his lead. Yeah, he’s hurting. Yeah, he’d normally be complaining. But it isn’t over yet, and for all he yaks through every stream Rita shoves down his throat, Juno can never bring himself to talk over the good part.

For the second time today, Nureyev leads him to a square.

Or something like one. It’s an open space lined with buildings. There’s a busy hole-in-the-wall there, a tiny grocer’s, some dark-windowed shops, and a few crumbling apartment buildings leaning against one another. There’s a gaggle of kids lingering at the edges of the place—one brushes past them and Nureyev snags her hand before it hits his pocket. His grip on her wrist keeps her sticky fingers in the air as he twirls her away from them. She glares and hightails it. Not like they’re carrying much, anyway.

A square’s typically a public gathering place, and this is not that.

A public gathering place on Brahma, the detective deduces, is a trap.

If it’s a trap, Nureyev springs it with style. He marches straight to the center where no one lingers. He shrugs off the constable’s jacket, drapes it on the ground. “Dear,” he says. “Why don’t you sit? I’m afraid we’ll be here a while.”

Juno accepts his hand down because there are no benches around and he knows a hint when he hears one. The man who was called Ransom traded his literal magic for some shut-up-and-watch magnetism that’s probably mundane. Probably.

He stands there, face turned to the sky, and Juno and every Brahman citizen who happens by shuts up and watches.

They’re little glances, the ones aimed his way. There’s not much traffic, and most of the people whose gazes Juno manages to catch think Nureyev’s either lost or lost it completely. They never stop. It’s not until he’s been standing there fifteen whole minutes that someone approaches.

It’s an old guy with shaky hands and firm eyes. “Young man,” he says. “It’s quiet today. No one’s meeting here. You should move on while you can.”

Nureyev thanks him but declines to leave. “I’ve heard something,” he tells him. He has to raise his voice to follow the man’s quick retreat. “I’ve heard that the Angels are down for good.” Who knows what the old man heard, but _someone_ caught Nureyev’s rumor and told their friends, because people get interesting to watch. Juno sits on the jacket and leans a little against his leg and watches people watch Nureyev. Nureyev watches the sky.

The sky’s not watching back.

They want to believe it, anyone who glances at him and wonders where the constables are or if he’s a plant or if—maybe, just maybe—

Of course no one believes him. And, of course, no one sticks around. Guy spouting nonsense with the world’s weariest detective hanging on his ankle? They’d learned hope under the brief rule of Mag Ransom. They’ve probably had two decades worth of reasons to unlearn it. No one wants to stick around and see how the cops decide to get him moving.

But he stands there a long time, and they don’t. The only uniforms in sight are the ones they brought with them. The people coming out of the buildings or passing by for a second, a third time—they all get less afraid to stop and stare. Juno’s gotta get up, because it turns out a jacket on the bare ground isn’t actually comfortable. Nureyev helps him. It feels wrong. Disruptive. Like Juno tripped over wiring in the wings and yelled _goddamnit_ loud enough that the soloist had to stop and laugh right there with the spotlight still on him.

That only happened once, okay?

And just like then, this tiny audience stays spellbound. Even with his hand tucked in Juno’s, he’s that good. Juno shrugs his own constable-chic off and dumps it on the ground. A person walking by accuses, “One of King Mag’s.”

They don’t stick around to hear Nureyev’s reply: “I’m afraid I’m entirely my own.”

There are things here Juno doesn’t know the shape of, whole mountains and valleys obscured by a desert’s worth of dust. But he watches people believe in Nureyev enough to loiter under the killer sky and he wants. He wants to go where this man’s headed next, forever. That’s all.

Nureyev’s been standing at least two hours when he moves. He’s gathered a little half-circle of people carrying shock in their eyes, like they don’t believe they’re actually standing there. He stretches a little, scans the group. He sees something he likes. He gathers up one of the jackets and puts it on. He takes Juno’s hand, runs his thumb over his knuckles. “Thank you for coming with me. It’s nearly over. It’s a tale I’ve heard often enough; let’s change the ending, shall we?”

Ransom was a man with nowhere to go. Peter Nureyev knows exactly where he’s going. He keeps Juno’s hand and leads him to a woman with a tight jaw and wide, wary eyes that watch first the sky, then his approach. “Excuse me,” he says. “My name is Peter Nureyev. I’m leaving the planet. This,” a magician’s flourish, a data drive. Her hand at her belt instantly, probably on the handle of something lethal. “Is a current copy of the plans for the Guardian Angel System. It shouldn’t bother you again, but I’d feel better if you and your contacts passed it around.”

A long moment where she just looks at him. “You’re not serious,” she says. But there’s something soft in the wrinkled corners of her mouth, she holds out her quick-draw hand to take the drive. She blinks owl eyes at him. “How’d you—let’s say you’re telling the truth: you tell me that GAS—you give me something like _this_ and leave?”

Nureyev’s hand, warm in his. “Yes. Believe me or don’t. Use it well. I have a ship to catch, and you have more than you had yesterday. Good luck. Darling, would you give her our contact information?”

Juno gives her his comms coordinates and Rita’s email. Her hands don’t quit shaking. They leave.

They leave. They take a transport and catch up with Rita outside of the castle and they grab their things and, before whatever magic or threat that kept constables off their backs can wear off, they leave.

It’s the rickety ship Juno dreaded all along, only this time they’ve got a tiny private cabin courtesy of Rita with a little help from the city’s coffers. He spends takeoff clinging to the plush of a bench seat, spiraling a little, and mentally writing himself a last will and testament that doesn’t include either of the people in the cabin with him. He settles on Mick as his chief beneficiary with anything he doesn’t want thrown to the rabbits. Rita and Nureyev plot discreetly on the opposite bench.

Great. He’s still figuring Nureyev out, but it’s never good news when Rita’s quiet.

Sure enough, she stands and heads his way. She stops in front of him, eyes narrow and arms crossed. “Mister Steel,” she says.

“Yeah?” Day’s been too long for this.

“When we get home, you’re sending me to the spa and then taking me to the movies. You ain’t invited to the spa day, don’t even think about it.” She pats his arm. “And don’t you forget what I said. You had your one warning.”

He absolutely forgot what she said. Before he can ask her, she’s gone. And he doesn’t have to be a detective to predict Nureyev’s hesitant approach, the way he kneels. Everything twisted in Juno’s gut straightens out when Nureyev brandishes the first aid kit. Juno’s been real stoic about it, but he’d go back and drop the city himself if it meant getting more of that numbing stuff.

Nureyev doesn’t ask, he just helps Juno out of his shirt. He’s so gentle about it that it makes Juno want to scream.

He doesn’t, though. He doesn’t scream, he doesn’t run. He can’t remember the warning, but Rita wants him to play nice.

Juno wants forever and a little something for the pain. That’s all.

“Rita thinks—” Nureyev unwinds the bandage on Juno’s left shoulder, makes a small sound at the sight of his skin. Juno keeps quiet. The hurt’s familiar by now and he’s looking _anywhere_ but at the wound. Unfortunately for Juno, the only other thing worth looking at is him: the furrow between his eyebrows, the upset twist of his mouth. “She believes you’re under the impression that I’m not—that before the curse was broken, I was someone else.”

Okay. Maybe for like, a minute. “Not an idiot.” It’s overwhelming, the urge to get up and go. But Nureyev’s looking real good with a fresh roll of gauze, the burn cream, and that face of his. Juno stays put. “I know you’re—there’s no Nureyev-or-Ransom. You’re just one guy. You’ve got your memory back. That’s all.”

Maybe it wouldn’t be so bad if he weren’t so sincere. He spends a moment looking Juno in the eyes before he turns back to his shoulder. The first stinging touch of disinfectant startles a hiss out of Juno, but Nureyev’s quick about applying the rest. “I know I’m not the same as before. I know this, too: even with all the lies, the magic, the confusion—you know who I am, Juno Steel. I’d like to see where this goes, if you’ll have me.” He lifts Juno’s arm by the elbow, wraps the gauze so, so carefully.

Someone oughta check the cabin for holes, because Juno’s having trouble breathing. Here goes nothing, Steel. No matter how strangled it comes out, this is the thing he has to say: “You don’t. Know who I am, I mean. I’m not—I’ll mess it up. God, Nureyev—it’s a miracle I haven’t already. What I said? About burning out? I do that. I do that to everyone. It’s only a matter of time. If _I’ll_ have _you_? You’ll hate me after a week.”

“I do very much doubt that.” And Juno’s ready to get pissed off, because he’s _trying_ here. He’s trying, and if Nureyev won’t listen, how can they ever—“I realize I know very little about your history, your life. But in the same way you know me, I believe I know some important parts of you.” Juno makes a face at that and gets a soft tap to the back of his hand. “Hush. I’m serious. Is it—are you worried about bad days? Like—”

What, the day he slept in and got a little grumpy? “That’s nothing. Had a whole lot of days worse than that. I’ll have more. You—” It’s not what he set out to say. He just keeps doing that. Still, he hunches his half-bandaged shoulders and says, “You stay with me and you’ll see.”

He’s got dark eyes and bad hair and Juno’s stupid heart. “I will.” He’s so slow when he pulls Juno close that he can barely stand it. “Oh, Juno. I will.” And Juno closes his eyes and likes the way his chest rises and falls and rumbles with his words. If this—if saying things out loud—is trying, then, maybe—

“Darling, as necessary as this talk has been, would you please sit up and let me take care of the rest of you?” And Juno sits up and delivers a flat innuendo because, come on. That question deserves it. Nureyev just grins wicked and whispers a promise into his skin. It’s not corny at all and, even worse, it’s. . . effective.

Okay. Cool it, Steel. It’s only another difference between Nureyev and—

No. It’s all him.

Juno’s starting to think Nureyev and Rita might share an Agent G brand of creepy ESP. The second Nureyev’s done with his slow and otherwise incredibly unsexy round of wound care, the second he’s helped Juno back into his shirt, she barges in with an armful of snacks that she bought by bartering that broken tablet.

“Hope it didn’t have any real fake royal secrets on it, is all I’m saying.”

“I couldn’t even begin to guess.” It’s cute, the way he scowls at a salmon-flavored dusty crunchy like it cursed him to twenty years in a tower. It’s less cute when he discreetly tastes it, makes a face, and sneaks it into Juno’s hand. Ugh. “Or care, truthfully.”

“Thanks, you shouldn’t have.” And he’s tired enough that he just cups the thing in his palm and drifts, distantly aware of Rita demanding complete reviews of every food item she brought into the room and some she didn’t. At some point, he opens his eyes and finds the chip gone and replaced with Nureyev’s hand. He’s in the seat between Juno and Rita, snoring and slumped over her shoulder.

“Boss.” She speaks low and Nureyev doesn’t even stir. “We’re getting close. Back to work, huh? You gonna take care of all those burns?”

“Yeah.” She’s not lying. The ship’s getting close enough that neon creeps in through the cabin’s small viewport. He’s never seen the city from this angle, not really. He didn’t look back when he left. “Yeah. I’ll go to the clinic. Hate to say it, but I think we’re getting mixed up with Dark Matters.” She takes that news better than she took _get that goldfish out of here, Rita. I don’t care what you named it, we’re_ not _getting a pet._ “Rita, you go off-planet a lot?”

“Sure, boss. You know I like a good vacation, or at least you oughta know—don’t know how you get by when I’m gone. But it’s nice to get away, Venus is real pretty under that dome, let me tell you!” She punctuates that with a waggled finger, which is enough to wake sleeping beauty. Nureyev snorts a little and sits up and blinks at them, at the cabin. He looks lost. “But it’s good to be home, ain’t it?”

“We’ll see, huh?” They’ll see. It’s all he can do. Well, not all. He fits his fingers between Nureyev’s, gives him something to hang onto.

He’s been an idiot about it. City’s gonna change, sure. City’s never gonna stop. But, hell, he knew it before he knew any of the guy’s names: he’s magic. There’s not a person in the galaxy, not a place in the system that could stay the same after feeling the brush of those fingers. Peter Nureyev sets foot on a planet and it moves to meet him where he stands. He makes lies come true; he makes the ending change. Juno Steel allows himself one hope. Stupid? Sure. Dangerous? Probably. He looks at Nureyev, drowsy and human and lit neon, and thinks it:

_Maybe I can, too._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ultrabots things I borrowed: one character makes a reference to the way the Dark Matters bots function as shown in 3.14, one agent is called G and is very loosely inspired by their canon counterpart
> 
> T_T this is the first thing longer than ~4k I've finished, EVER. TY for reading <3


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